I ran in a circle, trying to get around the golem. It bent down towards me, evidently preparing itself to sweep that scythe blade around once again. I lowered myself, ready to pounce on it, but the golem’s legs melted into the earth and rose again so fast I couldn’t work out where to leap.
“You won’t weaken it, Bengie,” Salanraja said. “It will just tire you out if you keep trying to evade it.”
“Can’t we just run away?”
“No. Watch out!”
I turned to see the pickaxe almost upon my head. I rolled out of the way at the last second. Then I turned again and bared my teeth and I saw an opening. The golem’s arm was right there on the ground, the pickaxe stuck in there. I darted forwards and leapt onto its shoulder and, before I slid back down, I swiped away the red crystal. It fell to the floor.
But before I could go for the other crystal, the golem’s shoulder melted away underfoot. Its entire body dissolved into the earth. Next moment, it had formed a puddle with me at the centre. I started sinking down into the thick viscous pool. I tried to swim out towards the edge, but I just ended up getting dragged further and further down.
“It’s eye, Bengie. Stop struggling, the eye’s right in front of you.”
I kept my head above the surface and tried to focus on what Salanraja was talking about. There was a crystal in front of me, glowing blue. I pawed at it, but the motion just sent me further into the puddle of clay. I was down to my neck at that point, just inches away from not being able to breathe.
Ah well, it had been a good life with more roasted salmon and chicken than I’d get in the wild.
“Bengie!” Salanraja called out.
She readied herself to roar, then she lowered her head into the clay and tried to lift me up using her front horn. But it was too slippery, and I couldn’t get any purchase on it. I could still see the blue gem right in front of my eyes now. My claws were underneath the surface of the clay now. So, instead, I ducked my head forward, and I took a massive mouthful of earth and gem.
I’d never tasted clay before, but I’d had a few mouthfuls of soil in my kitten days when I’d needed to chew grass to help me bring back up furballs. This clay had the taste of soil, but not the texture. It was pretty gross.
My head sank underneath the surface of the clay. I tried not to breathe down there – the last thing I wanted was nostrils full of that stuff – and I kept my lips firmly shut.
But soon enough, my breath gave out, and I felt intense pressure on my eyes, as if I was going to black out. Then the earth shuddered beneath me. Next thing I knew, I was shooting out of the clay like a cannon. Or at least I thought I was.
What had actually happened was that Salanraja had reached down again and tossed me out with her horn, just as the clay started to harden around me. I flew across the passage, legs flailing, and then I hit my head against the wall.
“Quick Bengie, get on my back.”
I tried to come to my senses, pretty dizzy. “I thought we’d killed it,” I said.
“We did, but the warlock will be after us. There’ll be more of them.”
I didn’t need further instruction. Finally, we were getting out of here. I scrambled up onto Salanraja’s back, trying to ignore the intense throbbing where my neck met my spine. Before we left, Salanraja lurched forward and wrapped her mouth around the crystal that had my dreams inside of it and charged away.
I ran down to the tail-end of her corridor of spikes to see what was going on behind me. I could only vaguely make out the shapes morphing against the rock in the background, but they seemed to be getting closer and closer.
But they didn’t reach us in time before Salanraja was back out in the icy wind. She lifted herself up into the sky, and I almost fell off her tail, being so close to the end of it. I caught myself and scurried back up towards her neck.
From my vantage point, I looked down below, and I could see around a dozen golems against the snow, no longer camouflaged within their natural terrain. My head was spinning, and I couldn’t look at them for very long.
That was the first time I’d ever heard him speak in a language I could understand. It was Astravar, speaking in my head. I recognised him from the voice’s timbre…
“You!” he said. “You ran away from my tower, you destroyed my golem, and now you steal away my magic. You may be just a cat, but I never let insults go unforgotten. Soon, I shall hunt you down, and then I will make you pay!”
8
Gift
I didn’t pay too much attention to the journey. My head was absolutely spinning. It ached like it had never ached before, and any time I tried to move it in one direction, an intense thumping would cause me to lower my head back down again as a deep groan came out of my chest. But I remember the colours I saw – white segueing to yellow and green, blue sky rolling overhead, and the bright light from the sun exacerbating the pain in my head.
That journey felt like hours, and I didn’t even have the energy to ask Salanraja where we were heading. Meanwhile, I kept remembering Astravar’s voice in my head. It hadn’t been my imagination, and it hadn’t been the stuff of dreams, I was sure. Rather, his presence there had been much like Salanraja’s – as if he could read what I was thinking and had known my very location. He must have been in the crystal that I’d swallowed – the eye of the golem – which already contained the warlock’s magic.
Eventually Salanraja thudded against the ground. Because of my headache, I didn’t have a great sense of balance, and so she ended up bashing me into the side of her corridor of spikes.
“Wake up, Bengie,” she said.
I didn’t move from my position. Instead, I yawned widely. “I told you that I hate that name,” I replied.
“Bengie, this is important. Get off.” The body underneath my chest shuddered like an earthquake, and I felt it starting to warm.
I growled at Salanraja, then I stood up and stretched, shaking every muscle in my body at the same time. It wasn’t just my head that hurt, but my back and legs, and I couldn’t take one step without some kind of pain lancing through my knees. I knew that if I didn’t get off Salanraja, she’d shake me off. So I sauntered lazily down her tail to the ground, feeling every single stride within my joints.
“Why can’t we just rest?” I asked.
“Just go to the crystal. It will sort out your ails and give you your gift. You’ve worked for this Bengie. Don’t waste the opportunity now.”
“Can’t it give it to me later?” I asked. “I’m tired. And, if you could bring me that venison you promised, I’d much appreciate it.” I lay down in the long grass. It wrapped around me, providing an extra blanket of warmth.
“No!” Salanraja let out a gigantic roar, causing me to leap to my feet in shock. I stared up at her and blinked, and she lowered her massive head to me and enveloped me in a plume of smoke from her nostrils. “I didn’t bring you all this way to show disrespect to the crystals. This is not just your future on the line, but also mine.”
“But the future is the future, like tomorrow is tomorrow. Now, this hour, I need to sleep.”
Salanraja bared her sharp teeth at me, and a rumble came out from her belly. I could just imagine the fire burning within there. Her nostrils flared and her yellow eyes took on a brilliant glow.
“Fine,” I said, and I walked around her towards the tall crystal she’d left on the ground. It was standing on its point, balancing there as if upheld by an invisible force. It was even taller than the statue I remembered on the roundabout back in South Wales – a weird metallic creature, formed of ribs that curved out from its centre like sickle blades.
My joints continued to ache with each step. My throat was also dry; probably all the moisture in it had been wicked away by that foul-tasting clay, and I imagined the feast of venison I could be eating right now.
But as I approached the crystal, these thoughts washed away, and I instead became mesmerised by the images flashing by behind the facets once again. My eyes fixated on the
light emanating from within. The images displayed a version of me looking so much stronger than I’d ever imagined. I was atop Salanraja again, carrying some kind of staff in my mouth. Dark-winged creatures – that looked like a cross between a bat and a buzzard – flitted around us, and I had my eyes closed as purple tentacles of light lashed out from the glowing stone of the same colour at the staff’s head.
The bats swooped down, extending out talons that were almost as long as their wings. But before they could get close, the tentacles whipped at them, and knocked them out of the sky. Hundreds of the creatures fell to the earth. Another swarm approached from the front, and Salanraja tossed back her head and let out a column of amber flame at them. When the light from the flame subsided, the creatures were nowhere to be seen.
“This is your destiny, Ben,” a voice said in my head. It sounded like a female human voice, but one I could understand. Just like the mistress back home in South Wales, it had a soft lilt to it, which drew me even further towards the crystal.
“You have weaknesses, and you have fears; we all do. But the difference between those who live up to their callings and those who don’t is that we don’t let the weaknesses control us. Pride, sloth, reliance, and gluttony are transient. Yet, if you let them, they will stop you from becoming who you are meant to be.”
I mewled, and I rubbed up against the crystal. When I touched it, its warmth seemed to cleanse away the muscle pains and my headache. I suddenly became aware of everything around me – the distant bird sounds, the swishing of the cool wind as it brushed through my fur, the slow rhythmic sound of Salanraja’s breath, the clouds, the light flowing out of the crystal and soothing everything it touched.
Of course, because I was a cat, being aware of my environment was nothing new to me. But this was different. Before, I would react to every sudden movement, unable to control my instincts. Now, I could disconnect from it all, and focus on what I chose to be of value. I could decide consciously what was a threat and what was not.
I was completely in control of my own mind and body.
“Why do I need this?” I asked the crystal. “Salanraja makes me think this is important, but I’m not sure what I’m meant to do.”
“That’s because you don’t know the fate of the world to come,” the voice in the crystal said. “It’s not just our world, but many, including your own.”
“What do you mean?”
“Close your eyes, and I will show you.”
I did as the crystal bade me to. I could still feel its presence, feel its warmth washing over me, and I turned into it as if turning my face to the sun. Then, I felt a slight pressure on my eyelids – not enough to be painful.
Behind them, the tapestry of the future began to unfurl.
9
A Cat's Purpose
At first, I didn’t think I was looking at the real world, but rather a moving painting. Still I recognised the setting – the crystal had taken me back to my home in South Wales. I didn’t traverse it like a normal cat would, nor was I being carried on a dragon’s back. Instead, I floated over the land, as if dreaming.
It was different to the world I’d grown up in and come to love. The landscape was charred; the rolling hills beneath contained no grass or trees, only settled dust. The sky wasn’t blue but a deep blood red, spattered with a layer of purple cloud, from which came an occasional flash of lightning.
The vision floated me into the town. The streets had immense cracks in them, out of which fronds of spiky ochre weeds waved in the odorous breeze. The houses and bungalows, usually decorated with shiny quartz, were all reduced to rubble. I floated into my former owner’s house, past the broken television set in the living room, into the kitchen where my food and water bowls lay shattered on the kitchen floor. In the bedroom were my owners, all three of them as skeletons huddled together on the master bed.
“If all good creatures succumb to superficial desires,” the crystal said, “this is what shall come to pass. The warlocks’ greed won’t just stop on this world, but it will cross dimensions. We crystals cannot control how creatures use our magic, but we can give you the powers to stop the evil of this world spreading across dimensions like a blight.”
I had nothing to say to that. I just wanted to wake up from this dream. I didn’t want to have to stare down at the skeletons of my former owners. Here, they could no longer call me back from the garden for meals of roasted salmon and chicken. They could no longer cuddle and pet me when I felt down. They could no longer bring me wonderfully scented sprigs of catnip from the garden and throw dry treats to me out of a foil-lined bag. None of this seemed to exist now.
No, this couldn’t come to pass.
“Get me out of here,” I said. “Please, I can’t take this…”
“Then take responsibility,” the crystal said. “And do what you have to do.”
The dream took me upwards, and the landscape beneath me faded to white. I found myself back inside my true mind once again, as the light intensified. Once it was bright enough, my eyes opened. I felt something pressing at my temples, almost as if it was trying to get in.
“Will you take your first gift?” the crystal’s voice asked in my mind. “Doing so will complete your union with your dragon, and you will be accepted as her rider.”
I took a deep breath, then looked back to Salanraja, who had one of her massive eyebrows raised. I guess I didn’t have much of a choice in the matter. If I didn’t do it, she’d probably eat me alive.
If I did though, she would probably feed me and look after me, just like my owners did in South Wales. But I was sure she’d make me have to work for that food. My previous owners would just dish it out into my bowls, on schedule three times a day.
“I accept,” I said. “Though, I wish you would at least tell me what this gift was.”
“You shall learn soon enough. Now, open your mind.”
“How—” I didn’t have a chance to finish my question, because a sudden pain seared into my temples at both sides as if someone had suddenly thrust a huge iron spike through my head. It came so quickly that I didn’t have time to yelp out. I only could grimace, and then the pain was gone.
Presently, the light from the crystal got brighter again, until it burned as intensely as a sun. But I couldn’t close my eyes against it. It felt as if my lids had been glued to my brows, and the magic from the crystal bored right through my skull.
At the same time, I felt something leaving me. It floated out of my chest, where a faint and very thin blue thread of light emerged. A similar effect came from Salanraja – both threads connecting right to the centre of the crystal, which started spinning on its own axis.
More visions flashed through my mind’s eye. I saw my past – the glorious bowls of food, resting on the sofa as my owners petted me, fighting other cats out of my territory, chasing squirrels along the garden fence, and then leaping into the hawthorn to scare away a sparrow. Then, I saw my future. Although, I should say, I saw many possible threads of my future. One had me dying through hunger due to days of roaming, looking for food that didn’t exist on the dusty earth. Another had one of those bat-buzzard creatures slashing me off a dragon’s back. In others, I was confident and powerful – swiping gems out of golems’ eyes, or I commanded a dragon over a battlefield, armoured soldiers lined up like matchstick men below as I battled against a warlock, a blue beam of energy from my staff meeting head on with a red bolt of energy from his.
The visions flashed faster and faster through my mind until I saw nothing but a fluid and constant blur. A buzzing sound emerged in my ears, so loud it was painful. The sound intensified, increasing in pitch as if building to a climax.
All the time, the light got stronger and stronger in front of my eyes, and it seemed to emit an intense heat, as if I was sitting there cooking under Salanraja’s flame. Whiskers, for all I knew, this might be her way of eating me. Using the crystal to hypnotise me like a frog in water slowly coming to the boil.
Either I
was in the afterlife, or I’d survived, because all of a sudden, the images, the heat, and the terrible buzzing vanished. I opened my eyes to stare right into the facets of the crystal. But they were now a dull grey, slightly yellowed by the light from the sun.
“Is that it?” I asked Salanraja. “I thought I was meant to get a gift?”
I felt strangely empty not having the crystal’s voice in my head anymore. It felt like those times my owners had gone on holiday and left me to stew with the other cats in the cattery. I could never understand the moggies you met there, and they didn’t seem to understand me either. Many of them had lost their grace, their pride for the hunt, their sense of uniqueness, their wild side. They just seemed to want to sleep all day, and many of them didn’t even care so much about food.
They’d become fully domesticated. They’d forgotten who they were – descendants of the great beasts of the plains, the jungles, the mountains, the forests. It was as if their ancestry had leached out of their very bones.
Salanraja lowered her head to me and studied me beneath her thick eyebrows. “You are different,” she said. “I can see it in your eyes.”
“What? How?” I examined my paws, extending my paws and then my claws, looking for even a minor alteration. Then, I craned my neck and licked the fur on my side, wondering if I tasted any different. Everything was exactly the same.
Salanraja opened her mouth, and I darted out of the way, thinking she was about to breathe fire on me. Maybe she thought my new superpower was invulnerability. Instead, she spoke out loud in a remarkably clear and deep voice. “You can understand me now, can you not?”
A Cat's Guide to Bonding with Dragons Page 4
