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Tiger-Lily/Dizzy

She meows but talks to the spirit.

"Can you move him away? I need to get prey."

Hopefully the mouse will still be here for a while longer. She may need to make this a quick kill, if she can.

The spirit cleared his throat. Speaking to Jayden he said "the cat needs a bit o' room. Can you back up, say to one side, so your out of sight. You know out of sight and out of mind?" He knew he wouldn't make sense, but was that important?

Jayden


Jayden frowned and then grimaced slightly and shrugged.

None of this made any sense to him.

"Whatever you say, Grampa," he muttered as he moved back and to the side, away from the diminutive cat.

"Yell if you need me, Dizzy."

Tiger-Lily/Dizzy

That's better, now she can hunt. She plans her pounce in her head, judging the distance and the angles. She doesn't move a muscle as she waits for her prey to show itself.

The burden away from the door and the little mouse wiggled its whiskers outside of the hole in the wall. It was still tentative, but DC being patient and experienced, it only took time.

Soon enough the mouse had begun to creep along the back wall of the small closet.

Tiger-Lily/Dizzy

Her eyes fixed on the prey, eyes dilated, not even a whisker twitches. She waits with infinite patience until the optimum moment arrives where trajectory, distance, cover and exposure of prey is at the optimum, her hips wiggle as she tenses and gather her energy for momentum, then she springs!

The pounce was perfect. In a moment the wriggling prey was caught in her clawed grasp. She had her still live sacrifice for her working.

Tiger-Lily/Dizzy

Transferring the mouse to her mouth is an easy move, one she has practised so often that it is almost automatic. Her teeth hold the animal firmly but without causing any further damage. Proudly she trots back down the corridor, passing her burden and his shadow on the way as she heads back to Shadow.

Jayden


"A mouse? Just a damned mouse?" he muttered.

Jayden rolled his eyes briefly ceilingward and turned to follow his crazy kitten.

The pair made their way down the corridor where DC had been, but Jayden hadn't yet. To his eyes, it was yet another hospital corridor no different from any others. Yet even his eyes might tell him one thing, the little hairs on the back of his neck told him something else.

Tiger arrived to see Shadow waiting for her. The thing was still swallowing energy from the other incapacitated burdens in the big building.

Shadow

He might have berated her for taking her time, with so many Burden lives at stake, but that would have been counterproductive, it was too important for that. Instead,

"Good. Begin the Ward: I'll make sure it doesn't interfere."

Looking back and seeing the Burden, he hissed,

"Spirit, get that Burden out of here. It is very, very unsafe for it, especially if it sees what we do."

Even more so if we fail.

He kept vigil, ready to pounce if the thing tried to interfere with Tiger's working.

Jayden


Following Dizzy down the new corridor, he felt a bit uneasy. He wasn't sure what it was that felt so unsettling - maybe just being in a hospital with so many patients - but he felt the hair on the back of his neck prickle a little and he reached up to scratch.

Then the other cat showed up.

Tiger-Lily/Dizzy

She had heard her burden following but there was little she could do with her mouth full. Shadow has the right of it though, she needs him to be safe.. and this place is dangerous.

She nods to Shadow and makes her way further in. Her plan is to make a circle of blood around the creature, whilst working her magic and then kill her prey at the completion to seal the ward in the most powerful way she can.

There is no time to waste. She starts her workings.

Jayden heard his grandfather's voice again "umm, don't go in there. It isn't safe," he said simply. Even as the voice declared that, Jayden could see DC moving along the floor in what seemed like a purposeful manner. He might just make out a little thin line being drawn by something the cat was doing.


Inside Tiger began to draw blood from her prey at a slow pace and use its vital fluid to inscribe the circle of protection.

Jayden


Jayden paused but did not turn back.

"Not safe for whom? For me, for Dizzy or for that mouse?"

Shadow

They were so close, so very, very close, to breaking the one rule that must never, ever be broken, the First Rule upon which all their existences depended. He growled,

"Spirit, get it out of here now!"

Tiger-Lily/Dizzy

She cannot interrupt her drawing of the circle. She has to leave this to Shadow to sort out. She tries to block out thoughts of the danger to her burden, difficult, and continues her magics.

Grandpa sounded exasperated. "Look just go, out into the hall. You can't be here. The cats will be fine. Go, go, boy. Go now!"

Tiger's working was building in power, the line being completed.

Jayden


He was powerfully drawn... at least two ways.

His cat was perhaps walking into trouble and his cat was real.

The spirit of his grandfather sounded incensed but was he real or was he just a figment of Jayden's possibly deteriorating mind.

Jayden feel crazy... he felt the entire world around him was going crazy and that final thought was enough to help him make up his mind.

He walked out into the hall.

Tiger-Lily/Dizzy

She could feel the power in her ward building. This is what she lives for. Her whole being tingled with anticipation.

And then there, at the completion of the cricle, her magical workings at full pitch, she clamps down hard on the mouse, letting its life blood seal the circle and complete the binding. She lays the body down with respect. The prey had given up its life for a purpose.

She looks up at the creature and the lines of power it had been drawing from the burdens. She is tense ready to attack or to run.

Had it succeeded?

The circle completed that much was clear. The lines of power that had been being drawn into the thing from elsewhere in the building, stopped. There was a feeling of that moment between waves, and then the creature in the ward started writhing, lashing out. Fleshy parts searching, looking for what it had been receiving and now was deprived of.


Out in the hall, Jayden could almost feel his Grandfather's spirit calming. "Good, boy, good." The spirit offered him praise for doing what he did.

All could feel that something was different. Exactly what would happen next? That was unclear.

Shadow

It had worked, the wrongness of the massed draining brought to a halt. Still, now the thing looked dangerous, felt angry. He trusted Tiger's skill with wards, but now it was a matter of how strong this thing was, or its master. One way or the other, they would be sorely tested, and for that, they had to be ready

Jayden


"Good boy, my ass," he grumbled, looking back over his shoulder toward the place where he'd left his cat.

"Talk to me like I'm some sort of dog."

In a very soft, almost under the normal tone of voice as if the old man spirit was talking to itself. Not actually saying anything, but ... "not a dog, they are considered sentient." It was so soft it almost wasn't audible, well none of it was, but...

Jayden


He wished he could turn in some direction in which he could directly confront the spirit but it wasn't in just any one place.

"And you're saying I'm not?"