Chapter 5

Stefan

Stefan broke records in his flight up the stairs. But as he turned to look into the room he left Clarissa in, she aimed a beam of life energy at the accursed werecat. Why were there werecats this far west? 

He was amazed at her power in devouring the cat with her life energy. It looked like it was on fire, but the light was bright and flawless white. Ashes flew away, glittering like metal. 

He saw the second cat as it approached her. He rushed to help her. But by the time Stefan entered the room, it was no longer alive. Stefan quickly took in his surroundings.

She missed an enemy. Stefan stepped in the way of the last cat, as Clarissa fell on the floor. When he saw how hard she was about to land, he resisted his instincts, which pressed him to catch her.

But he didn’t have time. He had a foe to fight. This werecat was easily the size of two grown lions. It’s fur aged with gray. Wisdom lit it’s eyes. The cat growled before leaping forward. 

Stefan swung around lithely and hopped on the cat’s back. He could just slit its throat and be done with it. But they had questions for the other side of this animal. Plus, he wouldn’t take pleasure in ending the life of a werecat.

The cat slammed back against the wall, trying to throw him off. It stunned Stefan momentarily. He grabbed around its neck, bit down on the closest ear. The cat howled and dropped to one knee. Stefan did not relent.

The cat threw himself back hard and dramatically one last time. Its efforts were futile. Lack of oxygen depleted its life energy. After a few more moments of cutting off the cat’s air with his arm, Stefan was holding an unconscious and shrinking enemy. 

He tied it up. The ropes would be loose by the time it regained its humanoid form. But it would at least slow him down.

Stefan stepped over to Clarissa and put a hand to her forehead. She was breathing heavily and she was not awake. She had expended more energy than she could handle right now. 

Those were some pretty impressive magic tricks after all. He would have to help her learn how to control her energy output. A short fond memory replayed itself in his active mind, of a simpler time when he learned to control his own. 

His father’s royal advisor, Old Tomus Herding, had taught him. Nothing Stefan ever did or said seemed good enough for the old coot. But he remembered standing outside his father’s room, when he heard the report. 

Stefan was described as “the brightest and quickest learner” that the advisor had ever taught. While it was possible Herding had embellished because he was the prince, the pride and excitement in his voice was real.

Stefan returned his attention to the moment, as he checked to see Clarissa was alright. Stefan glanced across the room. Back to his naked human form, the werecat breathed heavily as he slept. 

He was an old man with grey hair and wrinkles. Yet, he was still in extreme physical shape. Since they were exiled to the wilderness years ago, werecat’s lives were understandably difficult.  

The race found its own little corner of the wild after the accords. An agreement was struck that werecats would remain far from any other race’s city. Things have changed with the world since then. 

No one in human society still lived by the old ways. So the werecats could have broken the agreement a long time ago and reentered society. 

But it seemed they liked to remain apart.

Their lifestyle was a wild one and required sharp survival skills. If he was strong and lucky enough to survive to old age, an elderly member of their pack would be in top shape. 

Stefan admired their prowess as a race. This wasn’t the first time he fought one. They were generally fearless and fierce. True to the pride in their ancestors, the werecats were a loyal and solitary people. 

Stefan tightened the werecat’s ropes to be sure he did not to slide out of them. The ropes were enchanted and would make breaking them by transforming to the lion impossible. Otherwise in the transformation process, normal rope would fray and snap. It was the reward from the village that he helped come out from under the thumb of a giant ogre.

Stefan sighed and left the lion man on the floor. He would be back after he made Clarissa comfortable. He took her to the nearest bedroom, luckily it was next to this one and did not have a view into this one when she woke up. He assumed she would need some time to adjust to the trauma before seeing where it happened.

When he got back, Stefan angrily paced around the werecat that had threatened his soon to be wife. She was his family. They would regret the danger they placed her in. They had killed her father. Who knows what they did with her mother!

As he stepped up to the man, he thought of all the ways that he could wake him. He would have to hurt if he was going to take Stefan seriously. Stefan smiled mischievously.

Clarissa

Clarissa numbly drifted in the blackness of space. There was a sense of loss permeating the air around her. But she had no memories, no emotions of her own. Her thoughts were simply open to the universe, as she floated in the abyss of dark.

There was a faint voice. It was low and comforting. Yet it scratched at her mind irritatingly. 

“Wake up.” It growled, so familiar…

She tried to swat away the voice that threatened to rub her mental walls raw. He was so familiar, was he her father? The question opened a flood of memories causing Clarissa to sob miserably. 

“No, none of that makes sense.” She denied furiously.

“It does make sense.” The warm disembodied voice assured her. 

It was so familiar, reminding her of her youth, when it had come to her at her worst moments. Moments of despair, depression, anger. It comforted her, giving her someone to talk to when all seemed hopeless. 

Weird stuff seemed to happen around her sometimes. But no one believed when she told them about it. Her mother even told her to stop telling people about the strange incidents.

The voice first emerged from her mind like a claw out of the depths of darkness on her seventh birthday, after her best friend had left town. As they got to know each other, there were times in her dreams they had each chosen an animal form to play as. In those dreams, they danced, laughed, and played together. 

She opened her eyes, not realizing that they had been closed in the first place. 

“When you come to me, I will explain more. But now you need to awaken your mother’s life depends on it.” 

A picture of her mother bound and gagged as she sat by a campfire terrorized Clarissa’s mind.

“Mother!” Clarissa said, sitting up.