- Location
- Israel
Commercial break.
~~~
Gentleman Tiger and Foolhardy Wizard's Pugnacious Expedition
~~~
At two in the morning, there was a scratching on the bedroom door. By arrangement, it was Xavier's turn, and he got up, groggily opening the door to see Mittens parked outside.
It is time, the tiger purred. She Calls.
"In the morning, Mittens," Xavier half-yawned, and closed the door on his familiar's face, before crawling back into bed. Tamia had already stolen all the sheets.
Mittens phased through the door, before leaping onto the bed and crushing Xavier beneath his paws. As Tamia yelped, he batted his master in the face. Wake up.
Xavier snored.
~~~
"How do you even sleep with a full-grown tiger on you?" asked Tamia in the morning, all recaf'd and primped. "That's actually kind of impressive."
"Practice," said Xavier, sipping at his cocoa. Mittens paced around him, brooding dark tiger thoughts. "Anyway, Mittens has to go to the north to find his true love and get tiger-married, so I'll be gone for a bit." He scratched his head. "Do tigers even have marriage? Does this mean tigers have divorces?"
No. Mittens chuffed condescendingly. We get it right the first time.
Hmph! Hmmmph! Ophelia pouted, arms crossed. The resident love expert was put out at being excluded from this high adventure.
"You can't come, 'Phelia. Sorry. It's a man's retreat."
Mittens yowled.
"Yeah, what he said. I only get to go 'cause me and Mittens are soul-bros."
Tamia yawned. "If you must. But if you're going that far north, make sure to take some vids. I'm sure Vinceo will appreciate it."
"Yeah, sure."
~~~
After some discussions, delegations, and filing of personal leave, Xavier and Mittens departed from Casarrondo's Northwest gate on a Mechanicus jetbike absolutely stuffed with auspex scopes and transmitters. Apparently, the data acquired from a foray into the northern latitudes was enough to justify the cost, so long as Xavier didn't crash the thing right out of the hive.
"Your name is Betsy," said Xavier, patting the bike. "I've only had you for three minutes and I love you."
In the cargo tray amidst linens, mobile fortification gear, and MREs, Mittens poked his head out into the wind. From the dreams he had shared with Xavier, and which Xavier then shared with the Astrocartographicae, the lady-tiger was halfway to the pole and slightly east of the Dis Reference Line, judging by common constellations. Never mind that the only thing there was ice, ice, and more ice.
But north of the Spine was the Northern Range, which shielded much of the human settlements from the frigid boreal winds. No documentation of the dangers beyond existed, so Xavier only had orbital maps and his own scrying to rely on, plus Mittens' fine-tuned animal instinct.
~~~
CALDERA GATE
Located northwest of Cassarondo, this basalt-strewn valley, four kilometres at its widest, divides the southwest tip of the Northern Range from the northeast belt. The devastating result of a powerful volcanic movement in ages past, glacial runoff accumulated through the polar tramontane is heated by remnant geothermal activity, and travels northwest along a shallow delta to be swallowed by the Arctic Sea once more. Over many years, this action has eroded the harsh cliffs of the bordering Range and nourished the resilient wintry taiga that sustains the beasts of the north.
Approaching from the southern lands of mankind, one notes the decline of the mountain face and intrusion of harsh sky upon the horizon, limned in the pale shell of frost seated upon a cracked floor of azure glacial flows, marks the way to the harsh lands of the north. It is here carnage reigns, for Caldera Gate serves as a migratory chokepoint for land-animals traveling southwest from the tundral wilderness to warmer latitudes. Unable to cross the Arctic Sea to the west, and barred by the Northern Range to the east, all must pass through the Gate, beset by hungry predators and betrayed by the treacherous footing of the glacial floes themselves.
~~~
Xavier peered through the binoculars, brow furrowed. Then he lifted the scope to Mittens, who also looked through.
"What do you think, Mittens? Super evil yeti or super evil wendigo?"
Mittens sniffed.
"I guess." Xavier waved at the distant dot. After a moment, the dot waved back, before vanishing into the snow.
"Huh." Xavier scratched his head, before gunning it.
~~~
Day One
Travelled along northern face of Range until sundown. Set up base, killed fourteen spiders, two centipedes, a flying thing with lots of stingers?
Found weird purple fruit. Poisonous, tastes like spicy water, but very quenching. Mittens doesn't like it.
Mittens went hunting, came back with a deer carcass, antlers bioceramic growth. Tasted great roasted with spicy purple water fruit marinade. Ate half, jerky-dried rest. Soft pelt, great blanket!!
Night time very cold. Polar wind + warp = rainbow blizzard. UNFORTUNATE.
~~~
There was a giant rock in their path. It stood twice as tall as Xavier and about as thin, the coarse black surface segmented by glowing orange lines. It stood in a circle about five feet in diameter where the earth was flat with a carpet of lush purple grass, beyond which was the normal grey sand and grit of the northern plains.
Weird, concluded Xavier. He poked it with a stick, and Mittens snarled.
"Why, what's up?"
The tiger shook his head. Noisome.
Xavier poked it again, and the stone lit up, ringing with the heart-stopping clangor of a church cloister. There was a rumbling beneath their feet.
"Well alright time to go," squeaked Xavier, hopping back on Betsy.
~~~
MYSTERIOUS ARTEFACTS
Avernus is littered with the detritus of past civilisations and relics of singularly powerful psykers, and all but the most enduring, dangerous, or actively functioning erode away under the onset of time. Be careful out there!
~~~
Day turned to night, turned to day. The vibrancy of green plains gave way to the staid grays of arctic flora. Progress slowed and the temperature withered, even as the hours of the sun began to unspool and contract the night. In the daylight, the wind merely nipped at Xavier's face; as night approached, the cold seemed to phase straight through his robes and seep into his bones, no matter how hot his blood burned. White frost tipped his eyelashes and stiffened the layers of his coat; his breath numbed his mouth and wove cold dust in the wind.
Hours before dusk, Xavier would stop and build a trenchwork fort while Mittens patrolled. As night came, Mittens would settle for a nap, while Xavier held watch with a set of automated impalers. The nocturnal fauna that attacked unrelentingly were gradually losing traits familiar to mankind, proximity to the polar warp rupture and brutal resource scarcity producing grotesqueries of nature.
"Oh thank all that's good and holy, it's just a land crab." Xavier quickly roasted it, making quick work of the shrieking marble-shelled crustacean the size of a hill. "Crab bisque for breakfast! The height of luxury."
When the sun rose, Xavier would take the opportunity for controlled slumber, soaking in the dawn rays while Mittens took watch.
Then, fully rested after a biomantic blast, Xavier would hop on Betsy and rocket away.
~~~
Day Five
I endure the vicious winds of the north, shielded only by six layers of thermal webbing and hot cocoa. But even that is running low; should this expedition be prolonged, I may have to resort to boiled water.
Mittens, the traitor, has grown a thicker pelt of fur. He doesn't understand my pain. Also, he's getting fat.
The stars seem about right, but we're nowhere near any tundra. Think we'll have to ask for directions.
~~~
The penguin was about a foot tall, its plumage a deep, dark blue. It was clad in thin ice plate armour, ink with warp enchantment, and a circlet of rock beads was wrapped around one foot. It stared at them from its perch on a rock offshore, storm waves lapping the stone.
"Hey!" yelled Xavier. "We're trying to get to these coordinates!" He held up a holo-slate, the orbital map projected into the air. "Can you point us the way?"
The penguin stared at him with its beady eyes, clearly unimpressed, before looking to Mittens. "Wek."
"Mrrrr," Mittens meowed.
"Wekwek. Waaaark."
Mittens chuffed twice, a rumbling noise echoing from his jaws.
"Wekwekwek." The penguin lifted a flipper, pointing back south and east. "Waaaark."
Mitens nodded his head, before shoving at Xavier.
"Ow, what?"
Mittens nodded toward the penguin.
"Okay, jeez." Xavier rustled through the cargo, pulling out a leg-segment of broiled crab. He tossed it into the water, where the penguin pulled at it with a telekinetic pulse, before cracking through the inch-thick shell with a single smash of its beak.
"Wekwekwek!"
~~~
THE NORTHERN BRINK
A construction of solid ice that rings the North Pole and its writhing warp rupture, visible from space and nearly eight thousand kilometres along its winding, buttressed length, this wall cannot be traveled save by several natural chokepoints in the mountains and glaciers that form its foundation. Constructed and maintained by the penguin kingdoms, the whole of their civilisation lines its inner boundary, stretching inward to combat the eternal onslaught of empyreal monsters and spectral foes.
From a distance, its pale face is indistinguishable from the foggy sea that laps its base, a white band plastered to the horizon. The gross angles and curves of its course are only apparent on approach, tracing subterranean flows and inscrutable tides. Carved and sculpted on every inch, every high surface, every support column, arching suspension and long-legged buttress, are the heroes of penguinkind across millennia, statues of valiant-crested lords and swift-swimming knights, their eyes studded with pebbles. Here, in a sharp-edged pulpit stands Emperor Selruggik, the annealed ice of his image as diamond-hard and immortal as his beak. And over there, beneath the projecting corbel of a sentry turret hangs Grim Nkerremin, suspended from webs of water above the chains of penguin-runes that tell how he slew a witch daemon of the Mad Blue Bird. Across from him is the lineage of the Warks, every beady eye and spade-shaped beak of the family rendered faithfully down to the first Wark, downy breast emerging from the base of the Wall he erected, stern eyes staring out into the stormy seas for enemies from the south.
Although the nations of penguinkind are isolated from Avernus proper, lesser penguins range out often, hunting whales and fish to tribute to the warfront. Waddling rockhoppers make diplomatic journeys along the circuit of littoral tribes of the People, while deep-diving scouts entreat slumbering Deep Ones and chthonic civilisations for aid.
~~~
"You serious?"
Mittens gave Xavier a dim look. Very sure.
Xavier shrugged, before running the jetbike onto the ice sheet. It wobbled, but stabilized soon enough.
Carefully, Xavier crossed the frozen river, draining heat to form new paths wherever the floes drifted too far apart. It was slow going, mostly because everything looked the same bright white.
Suddenly, Mittens perked up, baring his fangs. Xavier couldn't see anything, but beneath the jetbike came the sound of quiet crackling.
~~~
Day Seven
ICE SPIDERS
THIS IS THE WORST
~~~
"We get back," Xavier huffed, strange shadows cast on his face by the burning river, "we don't mention the spiders."
Mittens patted at his head, snuffing out a sizzling lock of hair. Spiders are a fact of life, the tiger chuffed.
It was exactly for this kind of homespun folksy wisdom of Avernus that Xavier kept Mittens around.
~~~
The capybara chewed happily at a tuft of grass, while Xavier and Mittens hid behind a rock.
"It's got no claws, it's got no powers, it's got nothing," muttered Xavier. "Why is it still alive?"
Having finished off a clump of grass, the capybara took several small steps to the next grass clump, pulling it up by the roots and nipping it apart.
"Maybe it's a delayed defense. You swoop it up and bam, ten years of bad luck."
A particularly gnarly root took several minutes of clumsy effort to tease apart before it went down the furry gullet.
"So the individual dies, but the species survives. That's crafty."
Maybe the power, Mittens said sagely, is to think this walking luncheon actually has any powers besides being delicious.
"That's stupid, Mittens. What use is that? We can't risk it. Let's go around."
~~~
Jetbikes had two modes: hover and flight. For handling, flightmode's complete contempt for gravity and inertia made three-point-turns into a horizontal loop-de-loop. But for speed, hovermode beat out flightmode by an order of magnitude for the reason that less energy spent fighting the planet's gravity was more energy spent going fast.
A funny thing Xavier learned: jetbikes could not hover on water for crap.
Yes, the hover-field repulsed against water as easily as it did everything else. But the repulsion engine very much did not enjoy working with what fluid dynamics had to offer, and what this meant was that you had two feet of empty air beneath you while sinking like any other three hundred kilogram vehicle of ancient technology with a tiger on top.
Xavier learned this when he crossed over a shallow river that turned out to be a deep river with false advertising. Some sort of illusory algae had dispersed beneath Betsy to reveal some sort of body of… deep water.
Xavier was very good at fire, which water was not. "Aaaaaaah!" he screamed, sinking like a rock through a bubble of air.
Aaaaaaah! Mittens also roared, in a tiger manner.
Suddenly, the water separated beneath them, flying away from their sight. They were now falling through a dry cavern, dark stone rushing past them.
"Aaaah?" screamed Xavier, in an inquiring manner.
AAAAAH! Mittens roared in response.
"Uncontrolled descent detected," said Betsy's console. "Now entering parachute mode." The jetbike slowed, a bubble of null gravity projecting with a snap and crackle.
"Ahhhh?" said Xavier, quieter, but still pretty freaked out.
AAAAAAAAAAAH! Mittens screamed, the trailer flailing around wildly.
They landed, coming to a stop in a cave.
"Ah," said Xavier.
~~~
The bad news: Avernus.
The weird news: Xavier and Mittens had fallen into some sort of hidden grotto biome of mildly cold tundra, which avoided freezing by virtue of the layer of floating water separating it from the overworld. Thin sunlight filtered through the shell of water far above, caught in the fog that permeated the underwater bubble.
The good news: Xavier found a rock.
"Look, Mittens!" he cried, holding the glowing pebble to the tiger. "It's psychically active! It's got an auto-continuous empyreal counterpart and everything!"
Mittens put a paw on Xavier's hand, looked him in the eyes, and pushed it away. No thanks, I'm full.
"Just because you can't appreciate a good rock," Xavier complained. He flicked the pebble, which went gloing in the tone of E-flat. Hah! Tammy would love these things.
Two hours and forty magic rocks later, Mittens froze. They had scaled a hill, the grass wan and sparse beneath their feet. I sense her.
Xavier looked up from shoving a porous whistlestone into one of his many pockets, scanning the horizon. Well, scanning whatever horizon was there. "I don't see her."
Mittens growled churlishly. What kind of tiger would she be, if you could see her.
"Polite." Xavier checked his breath. If he messed up Mittens' hot date with a case of crab-breath, he'd never hear the end of it.
Mittens growled, sharp eyes peering into the snowy haze. Then he roared mightily, the thunderous noise ringing long seconds after his jaws had clamped shut against the cold.
Only the wind replied.
~~~
At night, the temperature dropped to a temperate fifteen degrees. The turbid sky stilled, the constellations shining through the floating rivers without distortion or fraying. And in the distant horizon a white band bridged from land to the waters above, as thick as a hand held at length from the eye.
"It's a tree," Xavier muttered, miming a telescope with his cupped fingers, which worked just as well. "Hugest goddamn tree I ever did see."
It was the biggest thing here; ergo, it was probably responsible for this entire thing. Flawless logic. First thing tomorrow, they'd march up to it and give it a damn good thrashing to make it let them out.
Mittens snuffed, sulking over his ladylove not returning his booty call. Xavier scratched his ears.
~~~
In his dreams, Mittens prowled the overgrown roots and black soil, a striped shadow dancing over the green.
He howled again, ears alert for the answering call that would not come. He pawed at the ground, scratching restless divots with his claws.
Calm, Mittens of the Imperium, spoke the Lord of Striped Forest.
Mittens restrained his startled twitch. The First Tiger was the most cunning and guileful of Avernus. There was no shame in being surprised. Mittens bowed his head in genuflection. "My lord."
Hanging vines shifted, twisting idly in the air. The woods creaked, bending under age and weight. For a brief moment, the shape of a great cat was written in the leaves and fruits and vines, but—of course—it was only the wind.
If your heart wavers, do not leap. If your claws tremble, do not strike. The dry litter of the forest, tossed by an errant gale, was perhaps, for a moment, amber eyes and sabre teeth. Run always, faster than your prey, and faster than your predator. Live, to hunt, to live. These are the lessons owed to you, given now in the stead of your mother tigress.
"I hear your wisdom, my lord," said Mittens. "I will be as swift as the onrushing bullet."
Be swift as light, and that will suffice.
~~~
Little did Xavier and Mittens know, but they had walked into a trap!
The dangers of Avernus inevitably produced one of two evolutionary paradigms. Any given organism would either develop internal powers to withstand the many environmental pressures of the deathworld, or change the environment itself and so gain reprieve. This secret world was merely one of the second: an "environmental control" type.
Many thousands of years ago, a seed was flung from a twig into the churning waters. Carried by the froth, it fed on the sunlight of the sky and the salt of the ocean, supplementing its feed with the bloody chum that inevitably filled the shark-filled waters of the world. After many months, the currents had carried it east from the continent of its mother to a place of cold and snow, the grass grey and transparent like the wispy clouds above.
It grew, establishing roots and reaching to the indifferent sky. Disliking the cold, it made it warm. Unhappy with the distribution of sunlight, it dispersed a refractory fog. Finding open land an untenable position, it wove space into a happy little pocket.
This was the power of a Garden Oak! Cultivated in ancient times by the primordials to reform unsustainable landscapes into a place fit for habitation, and maintain them against destruction. Powerful specimens were even able to produce a sphere of atmosphere and gravity within the void itself, acting as natural orbital waystations!
But that time was long since buried, the lore needed for such feats lost to the stars. Without the security measures enforced, the breed became deranged, no longer limited to a narrow subset of permitted habitats, flourishing in lakewater and lava alike.
~~~
Xavier stared at the rock in his hand, brow furrowed in deep concentration. Then he smacked it into his forehead.
"Ow," he said at the rock. The rock buzzed.
Mittens sighed. Master had devolved to arguing against a stone. Not that there was any shame in such an endeavour. Only in losing, like Master.
Oh, if only Singing Lady were here. She would know what to do. Probably scold Master for failing to cajole a stone. Or at least handle a holocorder to capture Master hitting himself for future posterity. Truly, there was no better woman for Master. How did the human matchmaking method of randomized collision meet with such stunning success?
Well, it hadn't. Not without Mittens pawing the scales.
Mittens, proud recipient of OKTiger's own romantic networking efforts and sadly lacking in helpful familiars of his own, sulked.
"Come on," Xavier whined. "You're a rock. You're not even alive."
The stone smashed into his face again.
~~~
There was an explosion. A speck flew through the air, skipping off the surface of the skyriver and tumbling back to earth.
It bounced off the sheer stone precipices of the heartland, skittering down to the melt-swirled hills and bony branches of coalwood that reached out, black veins on the white skin of the earth.
In the snowdrift, a nose poked out. Chuffed. Sniffed, tasting the air for a scent only tasted in dreams and half-remembered hallucinations.
There. Beneath the blood of some crude, warproot laced primitive was the soft husk of the male.
Stupid.
~~~
The earth here had been ripped up, amassed into curving spires like the ribs of a behemoth, thick carpets of leaf litter coating them with the colours of autumn. Xavier threw a rock, watching it bounce between the tree trunks and completely fail to drop back down, instead scuttling to a rest by a large, moss-ridden boulder. A boulder, strangely enough, that was adhered to a side of a fifty-foot crescent of stone, without a single notion of rolling back down to earth.
"How's it look, Mittens?" Xavier yelled.
From near the top, a fuzzy orange head popped up and roared piteously.
"That so."
While Mittens was dealing with his latent acrophobia, Xavier magicked up a crude divination. Kicking up some dust, he twisted his fingers in arcane motions, and squinted into the cloud.
Was that… was that a wyrm? And it was making a tunnel, shunting earth and compressing it to the side. And when the wyrm passed, the rocks remained in their position, held by latent psychic energy and suffused with its own gravitational axis.
Xavier looked back at the spikes of earth, and drew an imaginary circle from tip to tip, tracing out the circumference of that ancient worm.
"Augh," he muttered. "That's disgusting."
~~~
That night around a small fire, Xavier settled into his hammock, looking up at the ground from his place on the underside of an overhanging spire. Mittens, having conquered the elusive prey known as "fear of gravity," had immediately gone into nap mode.
Unlike the trees and stones, the smoke of the fire seemed to obey the true gravity of the planet, pooling down and away from Xavier to the night sky below. Above. Whatever. From up here, the grass of the plains all merged into one large shimmering banner, the wind and starlight echoing the sea in its gentle motion.
He fiddled with a dataslate, pointing it up and taking a picture for the scrapbook. Moments of peace were as rare as jewels on Avernus, and to be cherished as such.
After a few seconds savoring the moment, Xavier settled in to nap. Lulled to rest by the swishing of the long grass plains, he—
What was that.
What was THAT.
~~~
Day Fifteen
Why is it always spiders.
~~~
Xavier stared at the churning masses with some horror. More chittering fangs and spiky legs than he was comfortable with were currently rolling across the plains from horizon to horizon. Spiders, blue as the sky and sea.
Mittens stared at Xavier, unhappy with being woken up. Of course it was spiders. This wasn't news. This was not worthy of Mittens' attention. He was going back to sleep.
Xavier seized Mittens' nape, pulling him upright. His other hand was stretched to the base of the spire, ready to ring it in flames.
Minutes they sat, waiting for the first assault. But they went untouched, not a single claw straying up the spires or even touching the earth that was contained between them. The spiders seemed preoccupied with every single thing that crossed their path, examining blades of grass and devouring fallen leaves, shaving stones with their fangs and arranging and pruning and clearing to some unspoken order.
With some stupefaction, they saw one spider suddenly be engulfed in a burst of shrieking blue-white flame. It seemed unconcerned, lifting the glowing agate hunk at the centre of the inferno and swallowing it whole. Aside from a single puff of smoke, the spider was unharmed, going back to trimming flower petals.
Two hours after they had first emerged, each spider stopped, curled up, and vanished from sight.
"Wow, okay, fuck this place," said Xavier hoarsely.
~~~
Mood thoroughly ruined by spiders (coincidentally, Avernus' unofficial motto), Mittens had taken Xavier's sudden yet inevitable cowardice with aplomb.
Master, your tremulous heart brings ten thousand years of shame! Mittens yowled to the sky, ensconced in the trailer. Dishonour upon my ancestors to be bound to you! Dishonour on your ancestors to be your ancestors!
Yup! He was totally fine with it. Xavier cranked the throttle, the jetbike tossing snow and twigs. They were getting closer to the overworld boundary, frigid polar weather leaking through. "Look, Mittens, when a girl says no, she means no. Can't help it."
And I should trust you on matters of the fairer heart? Mittens snarled. Your efforts were pathetic and resulted in naught but wasted years. How lightly you treat the skein of love, when it was my own efforts that assured you a worthy partnership.
"A fair point. But consider this: we will fucking die here to a bajillion spiders. If I could scry for your girl tiger, I would, but I can't, so there." Xavier surmounted a snowdrift, feeling for the polar wind. "She might not even be alive."
You might not even be alive were it not for me! So little I ask of you, and so little you give. Mittens howled into the oncoming blizzard. O love, if we be true, show yourself—
A snow-white tiger popped out of the snow just ahead. Xavier cursed, banking hard. The jetbike flipped, tumbling through the air and tossing Mittens and all their rations into a sprawled mess.
"Sonofabitch," Xavier muttered, pulling himself out of some tree branches. Mittens, graceful and swift, had landed on some upright stones in a majestic pose.
The snow tiger simply looked at them.
Hark, said Mittens, prowling down. Madam—
There was a blur of fur, and Mittens went flying into the white. As the sprinkling snowflakes settled, the white tiger was fully visible.
She stood nearly six feet at the shoulder, her fur so pale and stripes so dark that she was nothing but two blue eyes floating amidst charcoal branches. All along her flank were the patchy growths of scarred skin, and her right paw, outstretched from tossing Mittens, was missing a single claw.
Mittens rolled out of the hollow, leaping at the she-tiger. Pumped up on juvenat and biomancy for the last two centuries, he barely came up to her shoulder, and with a snap his nape was caught in her jaws.
Weak, she said.
Xavier dropped out of the tree, arm alighting in a punch-dagger of flattened flame. "Hey! Let go of him!"
She looked at him, eyes twinkling, and Xavier couldn't breathe because the air in his mouth condensed. As he spat out dry ice and chunks of tongue, the tiger tossed Mittens into him, bowling him over.
When they got up, the tiger was gone. Mittens growled, clawing restlessly.
"Well," said Xavier, working out his new tongue, "I've seen worse relationship starts."
~~~
"Yoohoo!" yelled Xavier into the microphone, Betsy the jetbike emitting it from an onboard voxcaster. "Single female tigers in the area! Your one true love is waiting for you!"
Mittens hid his face in shame. Please, he prayed to the Lord of Striped Tigers, let his ladylove be illiterate in Low Gothic.
"We have hot food and blankets!" Xavier transmitted the telepathic concept of a fresh Sunday roast, complete with Tamia shoving gravy into his hair.
A rustle of branches dislodged some snow. From above, the she-tiger was acrest the thinnest twigs, bending them only slightly beneath her paws. I am listening.
Mittens had already fled into the brush out of sheer, instinctive terror. No doubt he would later assure Xavier it was a cunning step in the multifaceted labyrinth of tiger courtship and not him cowarding out like a big coward.
"Well," said Xavier, "grox curry, lemon chicken, fried pork strips. All the buttered salmon fillets a tiger could ask for. Fruits, too, if you're into that sort of thing."
Through the intangible sense of brotherhood, Xavier knew Mittens had just covered his eyes in vicarious embarrassment.
Grox curry. Lemon poultry. Fried strips of swine. The tigress stepped in midair and reappeared in front of Xavier, as seamless as a sliced holovid. I see them in your mind's recesses. Concoctions from the stars to enamour and cajole the senses.
Not how he would have described them, thought Xavier.
She leaned forward, eyes level to Xavier's own. The coarse ruff of her fur was stretched over thin muscle and bone, the lines of her skull sharpening to long, chipped fangs. Each one could split Xavier's skull from top to base. Distractions and bargaining. Do you seek my favour with such paltry offerings? The Great Lord may ordain such matches, but it is not written so. It may never be written so, and only the wind would know of it.
"…I see," said Xavier. "Then what does Mittens need to do?"
Prove his strength. She growled, the vibrations shaking the ground. Escape this land with me. Or it will eat him and you whole, and make stones of your bones.
~~~
The thing was that Mittens was not ruggedly handsome.
Not that Xavier was an expert on tigerly aesthetics. But Mittens's body had only ever grown to about five metres, tip to tip, before he had kindly, but firmly requested it stop, on account of it being inconvenient to walk through hiveways and nap on human sofas. Which was all well and good, because feeding him would have become even more exorbitant than it already was.
Mittens was a city cat, and spent most of his time around humans. His entire physiology had optimized to the endless supply of scratches and tuna. He was smallish for a phase-tiger, chubby in an adorable way, and his fur had more in common with luxury duvets than a true wildcat's pelt. His tail was more often used to pick up small psykers than to signal mood.
To his feral cousins, he looked like the tiger equivalent of a fresh-faced adolescent humanaboo with a flashy perm, whereas the snow tigress was like a battle-scarred barbarian Baneblade on four legs.
Psst. Xavier thought really hard at his familiar. Mittens, you there?
She is resplendent, came the dreamy reply. Such haunches. Such a pelt.
Mittens, thought Xavier, if you're into that kinda stuff, I'm not gonna judge. But yowza. Love makes suckers of us all.
He felt Mittens' irritation briefly overcome the pink haze of divine infatuation. I will not be judged by one so embarrassing as you.
Harsh, Mittens.
Fifty years, Master. FIFTY YEARS.
If you are done, said the tigress, staring at them with eyes like sharpened sapphires.
"Yeah, whatever, snowball," said Xavier, waving a purple hand. He'd found a purple flower all alone in the winter wonderland, and had crushed it in his hand to see what happened. Not exactly Mechanicus-approved procedure. "Lead the way."
The tigress huffed, popping and reappearing on another stony outcropping, looking to the distance where the white tree spanned. The spire branch is the only conduit to the outside world. All other boundaries converge inward.
"Which one's that?"
The tigress merely leaned forward. Xavier also leaned forward, channeling a contorted divination to see from his own perspective without the limiting biology of eyes. At the top of the tree, there was a single point poking out where all the rivers in the sky gushed forth. It reminded Xavier of a hive's drainpipe estuary, where the megatonnes of water gushing through was enough to boil off a cloud.
Mittens finally got his head out from under his tail, gazing into the distance. Hm. There was a snap hum as he cast an accelerative Divination, and yawned. A steep climb. Bother.
The tigress' ear twitched.
Was she looking? Mittens asked. He himself had not been looking in her direction, playing it cool.
She's totally impressed but she won't admit it, thought Xavier. Getting there.
Excellent.
As they made their way, the tigress would note the properties of various flora and landforms, and how to avoid the more exotically lethal vegetation. Seemingly unused to human Telepathic communication, her explanations consisted of visceral memories of the effects in question.
This one, she indicated, poking a dark blue posy, induces a hallucination of sloth. The memory was of waking up to an unknown land, achingly hungry and bone-weak.
How terrible! Mittens cried, with more sympathy than Xavier had ever witnessed from his loafing parasite of a familiar.
The tigress huffed. Don't patronize me.
Ah, of course!
"Dial it back, Mittens," Xavier muttered. "No respect for scrubs that don't respect themselves."
Mittens looked at him, eyes as wide and mournful as a sad kitten.
I may have done some damage there, thought Xavier privately. "Hey," he said to the tigress, holding up a random stone from his satchel. One of the musical stones, it made the sound of a clogged trumpet as he waved it in the air. "What're these?"
The tigress glanced at the tooting pebble. This is a pure land, which harkens to the age of gods. Magic lies in all things, uncorrupted by the epochs.
"Okay, sure, but why does it make the sound?"
The tigress tilted her head. Because it is magic, obviously.
Doing the human race proud, thought Xavier.
~~~
At night, as they rested atop a petrified willow, the tigress gnawed on a hunk of steaming crab. She had never eaten one before, having subsisted on the dirt and stone of the land.
Xavier watched her swallow whole the shards of inch-thick shell, and felt fear.
The Garden Oak is only accessible through secret ways, said the she-tiger. This whole land is wrapped within a torus of space, and to leave by any other exit merely diverts one back to the centre to be digested by the caretakers. One can run endlessly to the horizon and not move a single inch.
She stared at the ground, and finely detailed diagrams began etching themselves into the flattened grass, half amateur geography and half Warp-skein. Several points lifted up and changed into hunks of beryl stone. Here lie the passages to the core I have discovered. Each is a channel for the Oak's power; I am too weak alone to penetrate it.
Upstream against the current, across the fork, and downstream out the spout. Mittens yawned, gnawing on a baton of dried groxmeat. I understand. Master will take care of it.
She looked at Xavier, like an artisan considering the patina of grime slathered on a pillar of marble. A master he is not.
"Hey," said Xavier from his hammock. He patted Betsy, which had her own hammock. "Don't knock humans, snowball."
What does your singularity box have to do with anything.
"Mittens, your girlfriend is bullying me."
The tiger froze, mid-chew. Caught between the plaintive distress of his master, and the judgmental gaze of his ladylove, Mittens stuck his torso into the earth to escape, hind legs scrabbling midair.
"Coward," muttered Xavier.
~~~
In her dreams, the tigress roamed foreign forests, and felt the light of the sun she had never seen. The grass, razor's edge embrittled by the frost, dwindled to her breath and crumpled beneath her paw.
And to the east were the hives of humans, black fangs reaching to bite the sky. Nearer to those obelisks the grass was faded and dead, starved of sunlight by looming shadows, dusty earth shaken apart by the unsleeping rumble of industry. A haze of steam and light shrouded each monolith, drowning the horizon like dark icebergs adrift in a misty sea.
"I was promised a mighty warrior," she said. "And yet he is a fool of a cub."
The wind blew, and in the shape of the rippled grass the godhead pounced, landing with her in its eye. Freedom was promised. Whether water comes from spring or fall does not alter the thirst sated.
She chuffed, leaning to lick her paw clean of rime. "And you vouch for his strength?"
His strength vouches for itself. He is a little crooked in his way, and the way of humans, but his claw is sharp and his shadow bright.
The tigress was dissatisfied. Perhaps such things sufficed for others of the species, but the cup of her loins did not runneth over.
The grass turned toward her in long trenches, the sabre fangs of a yawning mouth. Does your heart waver, fifth-born daughter? Litter runt? Unnamed?
The tigress snarled. "I will not die here!"
Then leap.
~~~
At the edge of a blue desert, dunes of empty sapphire sands with not a single obstacle between them and the trunk of the Oak, Xavier was tuning up Betsy.
They'd been spending each night held up on the spires of earth as the hordes of insectoid caretakers scurried below; according to some arcane jurisdictional edict, they were forbidden to repair them, as it would transgress against the sovereignty of the wyrms. But any spires in the desert had long since eroded to the seething winds.
And frankly, the less time Xavier spent obliterating giant spiders, the less nightmares he'd have to add to the dream journal.
"We'll have to put you both in the trailer," said Xavier, eyeing the distance. "No way you can run there before those things come out. And we'll need to clear some freight." He reclined on Betsy's seat with a fish curry MRE, a stack of expended cartons piling up beside him. "Eat up, Mittens."
Mittens was already neck-deep in bacalhau stew packs. Damn it, he'd be lapping from the river for the next two hours.
The tigress poked an MRE, dismantling it in midair and examining each component of the venison roast with plum sauce.
"It's not poisonous, snowball."
She looked at him. Why do you call me that?
"What, snowball?"
Yes.
Xavier waved a hand. "You're a snow tiger… snow is white… you're white… I'm not really sure what else you want?"
Impeccable logic, Master, said Mittens.
"Mittens, I really can't tell when you use tiger sarcasm."
What is a snowball? the tigress asked.
Xavier considered that the finer nuances of snowball warfare were lost on a species without hands.
~~~
However clever Xavier felt he was for conspiring to hem Mittens and his paramour in close quarters, he failed to recall that such tactics of love warfare were only effective against humans, who were social animals. Tigers were solitary by nature and nurture, and did not willingly coexist save under the auspices of reproductive fever.
Crammed into the trailer, Mittens happily offered his flank as the tigress' pillow, as the first of a multi-step plan to woo her to his side. But the tigress simply snorted, and contorted into herself, a still ball of fur half-phased in sleep.
Now, a normal phase-tiger could lie in silence for days at a time if the hunt required it, stonelike in their silence. But the foolish humans had taught Mittens, fool of a kitty cat, of awkward silences, and the need for small talk, and averting discomfort of the moment. These were things Mittens would be wise to cast off, but love makes fools of all tigers.
Perhaps he could regale her with tales of his meritorious deeds? Or expound on the hardship of corralling humans, who were stupid and dumb? What of his many prey, arrogant titans brought low by his claw? Or the many humans who had almost killed themselves through dumb stupidity? How should he explain to her the delights of mankind's many variations on grox steak, a singular gem of genius in the tumultuous ocean of gormless tomfoolery that enveloped the rest of their existence?
Madam, he said, his words deft claws slicing the distance between them, is the weather not fine today?
The tigress was silent, and did not respond. True terror engulfed Mittens' heart.
~~~
The fool prattled on, speaking about meats she had never seen, covered with the juice of fruits she had never tasted, in places she had never been, and she could only curl in on herself.
My mother was gravid when she fell into this lotus-dream, thought the tigress, and birthed five cubs into the open maw of a hungry beast. She perished in the effort, and each cub followed her fate, one by one, each day another warm pelt and beating heart growing cold, stiff with limestone, a living grave.
The weakest cub, shielded from the bitter wind by flesh and stone, shivered and mewled to the sky. She grew thirsty, her mouth a desert and her eyes blind, and so hungry her skin stretched over her bones and her fur withered.
But she did not die, for this was a pure land. And in a pure land the water is your blood, and the earth your flesh, and the wind your breath, because it too was once living, and remembers life with painful, yearning envy.
So she lived. Trapped by her own fear. Hiding within the body of her own mother. Nestling her starving body where her mother's heart once beat, hoping for an end to the steepening pain. Hoping for death, in a land where death was forbidden.
In her pain she dreamed of her family, leaping and gamboling through heaven, strong and free as they were not in life. With her paws pressed against the veil, she thought, I too, wish to be so free and wild.
Her earnest wish to perish, made with every bone and drop of blood in her meagre body, was granted. And so she died, her milky eyes shut at last, following her brothers of seasons past.
And when those eyes opened, they were mine.
~~~
…for humid days of moderate heat, the Mint Diced Grox Tartare cleans the mouth and refreshes the senses.
The trailer rocked in the way anti-grav does when pulsing over a corpse.
"What was that?" Suddenly, Xavier was standing over the lip of the trailer, looking backward. "Did we just do a hit-and-run?"
Mittens peeked at the receding dunes, and then at his human fool of a master, and then at the empty jetbike seat.
Xavier waved him off. "Please, Mittens. I can steer it with my eyes closed."
A blue spider drone rocketed from the ground, tackling Xavier from his perch into the swallowing sands. Mittens quickly clambered over to the jetbike's seat, sprawling with his forepaws on the handlebars.
"Driver absence detected. Initiating safety deceleration—"
Mittens growled, and the throttle revved. Master, I cannot drive this. Like an unfurling flower, the tigress emerged from her reclusion, looking at the cloud of hot sand that followed.
A jet of black warpflame propelled a fighting mass into the sky, Xavier dispensing with gravity as he bisected the drone with a blade of dissolving heat. He soared, gazing upon the churning legions of spider drones ascending from the desert sands, blue grains glittering on their shells.
He took a breath, and spat. From his lips surged a torrent of dark ash, ash so hot it glassed the sands, billowing out to block the sunlight. The drones were swallowed up in the cloud of molten particulate, slag clinging to their shells, cinders flying into spiracles and roasting meat from the inside out.
Xavier dropped down, landing through Mittens and taking hold of the jetbike. "Suckers had it coming." Behind them, the sky bled orange and hazy.
There was a deep pulse, sand drummed into the air like rain from the quaking earth. Far ahead, Xavier saw a flash of red light, the glimmering promise of sunset, and hammered the boost. They surged forward, a flat arrow of road accreting ahead of the jetbike's curved pilot.
Suddenly, the track veered to the left. Xavier corrected, but the desert beneath them was being pulled, dragged into the wake of an emerging mountain. Sand streamed off in sapphire waterfalls, eight ridges thrusting out and revealing themselves as legs, and two claws burst up to the false sky, large enough to gut a hive.
Worst of all, the jetbike was sinking into the sudden quicksand. Out of sheer nerves, Mittens burst into flame.
Why are you on fire?
Mittens chuffed, his fur ablaze. Because spiders can't bite you if you're on fire.
For a moment, he saw something approximating respect in the eyes of the tigress.
Xavier leaned over the side of the jetbike, arm set in a bowling pitch. He rolled a glassy orb of golden light that sunk into the disturbed sand. Moments later, the churned sand flashed white and clear as it instantly phase-shifted into liquid glass. A second orb shattered across the boiling sea, flash glazing it into a fractured plane.
Finally on solid ground, the jetbike accelerated. The portal shimmered as they passed through—
~~~
Xavier woke up, and immediately regretted it, as one does when discovering they were a torso. The long fingers of dead trees reached up around him from the snow, painted red in the dusk.
Mittens was circling around him, snapping at opportunistic scavengers, his tail trailing the ground. Stay still, Master, said the tiger, fending off a hyena. You are badly injured.
"How come—" Xavier felt incredible nausea from a stomach that no longer existed, and wrestled it down. "How'd you wake—ooh god."
A daring black-taloned wolverine tried to swipe in Mittens' blindspot, and was promptly roasted. Xavier felt the world fade out, before the tiger's Biomancy brought him back.
"Oh god don't do that again," he wheezed. Some memories were coming back now, which Xavier had been perfectly happy to leave behind. As it turned out, trying to swim upstream through a pseudo-warp-passage was not fun at all.
They seek to consume your flesh, Master. Power such as ours will sustain them for years. Mittens flicked his tail, a pencil-thin beam of white lasfire searing through the sky. A raggedy condor fell to the earth in two sizzling pieces, poison breath shriveling away. The tiger rumbled the air with a warning growl.
Goodness gracious, thought Xavier dizzily, interspecies cooperation fueled by the promise of human steak with tiger tartare. What a surprise.
A symphony of crackles rung out. From every corner sprung black ice daggers, impaling everything in a circle around them. Out of nothing, the tigress appeared, gazing at Mittens, before looking to the fading sun.
Mittens growled, snapping his jaws with a loud clack.
The tigress chuffed, turned tail, and leapt away.
Xavier's familiar could do nothing but watch, eyes tracking the weaving female until he no longer could. Then he picked up his master, set him on fire, and threw him into the nearest tree.
It caught alight, flame consuming it with unnatural swiftness. Streamers of flame lashed from its highest branches to neighbouring trees, until the whole forest was ablaze.
Mittens waited within the roaring flame as the dusk gave way to night. Slowly, the bonfire began to recede, extinguishing at its borders as the centre burned hotter, heat and energy concentrating into a dome of white heat. Then the dome vanished, a human kneeling in the steaming crater of glass.
Xavier stood up awkwardly, fire returning to naked flesh. He looked to the direction where the tigress had disappeared. "Wow. That's rough, Mittens."
Mittens sat down, and rested his head on his paws. Xavier sat next to him, fingers raking through the fur between his ears. "It's alright, Mittens. Someone once said, 'if you love something, let it go.'"
Mittens closed his eyes. That is the most idiotic thing I've ever heard, Master. May the imbecile die in a tar pit.
"Yeah, I guess." Xavier hugged his familiar. "It'll be okay. Women are crazy. Today, she doesn't like you. Tomorrow, well, who knows?"
Mittens let out a breath. You are not riding me home.
"Oh come on! Is it the lack of pants?"
That is one of many reasons.
Xavier grumbled, rubbing his hands together. "Had to have a tiger as a familiar."
There was a crashing snap, a jetbike falling out of thin air, the cargo trailer clattering behind it. "Graviton containment failure. Please contact an engineer."
"Betsy!" Xavier yelled exuberantly. "I knew you'd never betray me!"
~~~
They returned a week later, Xavier surfing the junked jetbike on a wave of telekinetic force. The first thing he did was requisition shoes, and then (upon recommendation) pants.
"Honey, I'm home!" he announced, exploding into the apartment without a shirt. He hefted a bag of rocks. "And I got souvenirs!"
Give give give, said Ophelia, snatching the sack.
"Gerald," crooned Tamia, looking up and over the back of the chair. "Did you have fun?"
"I did. Did you miss me?"
"Nope! Get lost, idiot." She reached up, pulling Xavier in to smooch his lips, before returning to her book.
"I'll get right on that. Ooh, but, uh, Mittens had a bit of trouble. His fiancée ditched him, and it just tears him up."
What! Ophelia yelped. NOOOOOO.
"Yeah, so maybe don't mention that until he gets over it." Xavier scratched his head. "You know. If."
"Okay, dear," said Tamia. "I won't mention it to you."
"To him, to him!"
~~~
Days passed, and nights, as well.
On the external access balcony of the central spire of Dis, was a tiger. It would sit in the sun, watching the clouds drift by. Sometimes, it would yawn, but it mostly spent its time in vigil, searching for something no one else could see.
Sometimes, it pricked its ears, listening to the wind. Sometimes, it roared. But if it heard anything but the wind and echoes of its own offering was anyone's guess.
Who knew what it was searching for? Who knew whether it would find it? Maybe, it never would.
But love makes suckers of us all.
~~~
AN: On Avernus, even the rocks are magical.
The Avernite version of Sandra and Woo?
