The Big Meow

They rushed her. Rhiow started to back out but found nowhere to back to: they were behind her, blocking her way out, and the ones coming at her from front and sides reached out to hold her. Well enough, she thought, Rhiow closed her eyes, felt in her mind for the spell, and shouted its last word in the Speech –

In this dimness, it was just as well her eyes were closed, for the flash would have blinded her. Rhiow felt the pressure of the clinging tumor-things fall away. Opening her eyes, she saw that the space around her had opened out a little, and the tumor clusters and mobile cells were shivering and flickering with crackles of afterlight from the discharge. She could feel the spell charging up again in the back of her mind, but Rhiow wasn’t going to wait. She crouched and leaped over the heads of the nearest malignancies –

Something out of the crowd, an oozing loop of tissue, shot up, wrapped around her and yanked her down. A second later Rhiow was down on the ground, half blinded in the sooty fog rising up again from street level. She was quickly weighed down, more and more heavily, as the tumors piled up on top of her. Rhiow struggled, feeling them pushing blobs of tissue at her, probing, poking. The poking got sharper.

Rhiow’s mind flared up in terror, for if she was physically present enough in this scenario to affect these things, they could affect her in turn – and they were looking for a way to implant something of themselves in her –

Not today you don’t!! Instead of resisting the weight of them, she gave in to it – then, in the moment of surprise that followed, Rhiow rolled and lashed out with her claws, slicing, kicking. A high thin shrieking came from somewhere in the pile of wet slobbery tissue that lay atop her: the tumor-creatures closest tried to ooze away. As the pressure lessened, Rhiow managed to roll again, got her feet under her. The spell was ready, recharged. She cried its last word again –

More shrieking as she struggled to her feet and looked for clear space to jump into: but there was none except right around her, and even that space wasn’t as big as it had been before. Either they’ve gotten used to it, or it’s just not strong enough. Rhiow’s whole pelt was shivering with revulsion at the touch of the tumor-things as they came at her again. If I jump another time, the same thing’s going to happen, Rhiow thought as she crouched. No other way out of this. I’ve got to turn up the juice in this spell. I’ll try not to harm him, but —

A sudden new burst of shrieking came from the far edge of the crowd that was around her. The attention of the tumor-creatures turned that way. Rhiow reared up on her hind legs and began slashing at them again, batting at them as if they were unusually large rats, but also peering desperately past them to see what was happening.

Off at the edge of the ugly crowd, she caught side of a shadow, a Person, fighting toward her, small malignancies and large crowding away as it came. For a moment Rhiow thought she was looking at someone’s restatement of legend, for where the Person’s claws should have been there were ferocious cracklings of light like the aftereffect of her own spell. Urrau Lighning-claw?! Rhiow thought, confused by the apparition, yet entirely welcome to have a demigod mix in. But the lightning was understated, as if whoever was coming had understood that any wizardry used had to be carefully tempered in this scenario. Whoever was coming was doing most of the work with his paws, and plainly had a gift for it. The tumor-things were flying from his blows, and though they tried to rush and smother him down as they had Rhiow, they weren’t getting close enough to get a chance.

Rhiow started fighting her way toward the newcomer, and though she might not have been physically as strong as the other, her attackers’ attention was divided now. Shortly there were only three or four layers of the ehhif-like tumor creatures between the two of them, and then just two. Rhiow bashed in the heads of the remaining few that were right before her, and could now see the other Person’s face. Two eyes, not one, she thought a little irrationally. Not Urrua, then. And not Urruah either, for this Person was slenderer, and nearly as black as she was.

Hwaith?!

In the unnatural light he was somehow burning dark, and every claw was out, all glinting far brighter than they should in that ugly red light. He spun where he stood, and all the malignancies around them backed away a little as he slashed at them. Time to go, wouldn’t you say? Hwaith said.

Rhiow glanced around at the crowd pressing in and couldn’t see any other course of action that made sense. Both of us or nothing, she said, making one small vital change to the spell lying in the back of her head.

That would be my plan too. Ready?

Ready!