Chapter Text
It’s my wedding day tomorrow, and I’ve never been so terrified in my life.
I am getting married to the worst man in the world. He scares me. I don’t want to be in the same room as him, much less live with him. Just the thought makes me want to throw up. I even considered running away to the human world, but I know the guards wouldn’t let me anywhere near the teleporting facility.
My disgusting fiancé is named Lycon Lupinus. He’s the prince of the dog kingdom, the same way I’m the princess of the cat kingdom. I don’t have time to go into the long political history between the cat and dog kingdom, but it’s been hostile for centuries. Only just recently have things cooled down. Just a few decades ago, the idea of a cat person marrying a dog person was deemed ridiculous. This marriage is a huge political move to show just how close the two kingdoms have become now.
But the issue is, something’s just… wrong with Lycon. It’s not that I don’t like dog people! Many cat people here still hate dog people, but I’m not one of them. See, I think the power of being a prince got to his head or something. And the worst part is, no one believes me.
See, I found out because of the party for my 18th birthday just last week, which was hosted in the ballroom of the cat kingdom’s castle.. Even before my birthday, my parents had already planned out my marriage with Lycon, and I would meet him for the first time at the party. Me personally, I’ve never cared for boys. I never understood why no one would shut up about them at school. So I already wasn’t looking forward to this at all, and that’s not even mentioning how he’s a whole 4 years older than me.
Then I met him in person. He’s very distinctive, with long white hair and standing 6 feet tall, making him a whole half a foot taller than I am. He wears a very fancy full white suit, which was so well-tailored it made me feel insecure about my relatively basic pink dress, purple bow tie and pink tiara with a heart-shaped pattern on the front. I wear that outfit often, my best friend Madeline says it fits me.
He seemed fine at first, and he even gave me a present for my birthday. It was this really beautiful golden pendant, holding a purple crystal in the shape of a flower. It was so beautiful I gasped and even instinctively hugged him. Then he called me cute. Ew. I wish I could go back and tell myself not to do that. I don’t ever want to touch him again.
It was a few hours later when some catgirl shoved past me, subtly handing me a note as she did so that no one else would see. I never saw her face, but I read the note, and that’s when my perception of my future husband changed forever.
“Lycon put something in the drink. Don’t take it from him.”
I felt the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. I was about to chase after that girl before I heard someone behind me.
“Hey Riri! You thirsty?”
I turned around. Lycon was standing there, holding a cup of water in his hand. My ears immediately fell to the sides of my head.
Just thinking about it again makes me anxious. He looked so innocent. If not for that note, I would have gladly taken the water. I still wasn’t sure whether to believe the note or not, but I had to stay on the safe side, especially since drinks can be laced with horrible kinds of magic.
“No, thanks! I’m not thirsty.”
“You sure? Dehydration can be a serious issue, especially at a long party, you know.”
I caught him glancing at my chest for a split second, but I wasn’t sure whether I was imagining it or not at first since he did it so fast. If I wasn’t paying attention I certainly would have missed it.
“No, no, I’m fine! Really! I can help myself!”
“Come on, Riri, you look thirsty. Just have a sip. Please?”
He held the cup out right up to my mouth. He was being way too forceful and strange about this. I started panicking for real once I noticed his sly smile that he quickly hid. My tail began flicking, which I do subconsciously when I’m nervous.
“I’m fine, I just remembered, uh, something I have to get to real quick bye!”
I ran off, but I wasn’t sure where I was going. Soon I found myself in the women’s restroom, and I suddenly realized the gravity of the situation.
I was going to get married to this man. No one would believe me saying the prince is a complete creep, and even if they did they wouldn’t care. I was going to spend the rest of my life with this creep and unlike this time, I wouldn’t be able to run away from him.
So I cried. I cried a lot in the women’s restroom. I threw off the pendant he gave me from my neck and left it on the ground. Then I picked between one of our two gods and prayed to him to give me a better marriage, to get me married to someone, anyone else.
I don’t think he listened.
As you can see, I’ve started writing in this diary I got for my 18th birthday. Some nobleman I think I’ve met a few times before gave it to me. I wasn’t interested at all at the time but since I can’t tell anyone else about what happened earlier, I think writing it down might help. I feel like I need to get my experience out there somehow, especially if Lycon starts doing any other gross things to me.
Since I’m writing in this diary, and I’m a princess, this might become a historical document some day. If that’s the case, maybe some really important human world leaders will read this some day too. I’m surely awful at introducing myself, but here goes!
Okay, my name is Rianne Lianne, the only child of king Lybian and queen Felicia. Basically, we live on a large, secret island in the Pacific Ocean (near Japan actually, that’s where they got all their catgirl ideas from) and have kind of been hidden from the human public for thousands of years! And we have magic too! Me personally, I don’t know any magic. My parents keep telling me my special magic will manifest eventually, and then I’ll be able to learn spells, but I’m not so sure that’ll happen. I’m already 18, and I haven’t even felt the slightest bit of magic in me, which is especially strange for the royal bloodline.
Everyone in the Cat and Dog kingdoms knows this already, but basically a common ancestor of all mammals inhabited the island of Nivora, and we evolved similarly to humans except with traits similar to those found in cats and dogs. However five thousand years ago, two of our kind, one cat man and one dog man, were given magical powers in the form of two black shards from our two gods, and they then passed along this magic to others, eventually resulting in all dog and cat people having magical powers. The cat man became the first king of the cat kingdom, and the dog man became the first king of the dog kingdom. So, the cat man was actually my very, very distant grandfather. My dad is the current king and a direct descendant of that first king, while my mom is just a very high ranking noblewoman who was chosen to marry into the bloodline. We then first met humans on their land, in a place they call Japan, hundreds of years ago back in about the 1200s, but as it turned out humans REALLY don’t like people different from them. So we fled and swore to never reveal ourselves to the human public ever again.
Oh crap, it’s almost midnight, and my wedding’s tomorrow. It’ll be my first time meeting Lycon since that incident. I don’t want to do this. I hate being a princess sometimes.
My wedding dress was way too tight and itchy. As we walked down the aisle, I waved to my family and other nobles that I recognized in the crowd, really trying to ignore Lycon. My heart felt like it was about to burst out of my chest, but I couldn’t show anyone how scared I was.
Then Lycon held my hand tightly. So tight it hurt. I stopped waving and shut my eyes. I was breathing slowly just to calm myself down. Everything’s been moving way too fast, but that’s how it is with political marriages.
I was thinking about how everyone really envies my position, everyone except for me. No one understands how difficult and lonely being a princess is. I had to study so much political history it made my head hurt! And even once I become queen, my husband will have most of the power, anyway, and-
Oh. Oh gods. Oh gods no.
That was when I truly realized that this was the rest of my life now. He would have complete power over me, forever. I slowly walked up to my side of the altar, trembling. The old priest started saying something, but I wasn’t listening. I was just desperately trying not to cry, but it wasn’t working.
I was crying in front of everyone. I think they all assumed it was tears of joy when it was anything but, even though my tail was tucked between my legs out of fear. But Lycon’s tail wouldn’t stop wagging furiously. Before I knew it, the priest whispered in my ear, “you have to say “I do”.”
I just stood there for a moment. Lycon tilted his head at me. The bastard was smiling from ear to ear, like he had just won the lottery. I wanted to be as far away from him as possible.
During a wedding, you have to kiss your partner. I’ve never kissed anyone before. I didn’t want to share my first kiss with him, of all people. My feet started backing away on their own.
I whispered, “No. No, no no no no.” I don’t think anyone heard me, except maybe Lycon. Lycon started walking towards me, which only made me back away faster.
“Get away from me. GET AWAY FROM ME! GO AWAY!”
He backed me up into the corner of the room. I felt like a baby rabbit who had just been cornered by a predator. I was praying that maybe, maybe I was somehow wrong about him, and it was all a misunderstanding.
He made sure his back was to the audience so they wouldn’t see anything, and then he grabbed me by the throat and squeezed my neck so hard I couldn’t breathe. He gave me the angriest, sternest look I think he could possibly muster, and then I felt my neck burn like it was on a hot stove for just a second.
This was his fire magic. I had heard about it, but had never seen it before for myself. Not only was he physically stronger and taller than me, but he had unlocked his magic before me.
He let go of my neck, and I gasped for air. He had the sense to not burn me for long enough to leave a mark that would be visible to everyone, but my neck still stung. He grabbed my hand and led me back to the altar. He was smiling and waving to the crowd. I couldn’t believe it. He was a completely different person than he was a second ago, now that the public could actually see him.
When the priest asked me to say “I do”, I said it, because I was scared of what Lycon might do now if I didn’t go along. And then he pulled me in and kissed me in front of everyone.
I’m not going to describe how that felt. I don’t even want to think about it too hard. The rest of the wedding was a blur. I vaguely remember people talking to me and congratulating me, but I never said anything back. Lycon was incredibly sociable though, and always stuck near me, no matter how many times I tried to slip away from him. I remember Madeline coming up to me once, and patting me on the back, but I hardly even cared. I turned to her, with tears in my eyes, but just like everyone else she thought I was crying from happiness. She said some generic congratulations and then left. I wanted to say something to her, but I just couldn’t find the words.
It’s about midnight now, and some man is driving me and my “husband” to our new mansion. It’s in a secluded forest in the middle of both the cat and dog kingdoms. Apparently, I’m going to have to spend a whole month there with him so we can “get to know each other”, which really means our parents want us out of the way for awhile while they work out all the political stuff.
Other than a few people guarding the perimeter, it’ll just be me and Lycon. Alone. In a secluded mansion. For a month.
I raised my fingers to my neck a minute ago. I have sharp, retractable claws. I could easily cut through my own neck if I wanted to. But I couldn’t do it. I tried to put my fingers on Lycon’s neck, but he just batted my hand away.
I don’t know what I was thinking. I may hate Lycon, but I couldn’t kill him. I’d rather die myself than have to kill someone else. I don’t want to be a murderer.
It’s going to be a long month…
It’s only been a week here, and already I can confidently say that this has, by far, been the worst experience of my entire life. And that’s saying a lot because one time as a kid I got so sick my temperature was 104 degrees and I threw up at least 30 times over a week.
Lycon is truly depraved. I don’t know if he’s a sadist or if he was dropped as a kid or both, but since none of the bedroom doors have locks for some reason, I have to move furniture in front of my bedroom’s door every night just so I can sleep without the fear of him coming in and doing something to me. And I’m not just saying that because I’m paranoid; he told me that he tried to get into my room at 2 AM but couldn’t because I had blocked the door like that. He calls that me being “feisty”. Ugh. It makes me want to tear his eyes out.
I actively spend all of my time staying away from him. Thankfully, the mansion is pretty large, so when he does go looking for me, it takes him awhile to find me. My parents used to vacation here with the king and queen of the dog kingdom, which apparently really helped strengthen the relationship between kingdoms. Me personally, if I ever had to talk to Lycon’s parents, I think I’d slap them in the face because they’re clearly doing something wrong with their parenting.
I don’t like the things he says about my body. I’m not going to repeat them here. I try not to think about it too much, to stop myself from going crazy. He keeps trying to touch my chest and I keep having to push him away. Even me scratching his face doesn’t seem to faze him. He calls me his “little kitty”. I feel queasy whenever he calls me that.
Once while I was eating chicken liver in the kitchen he snuck up behind me and groped my chest. I tried to push him away from me and yell but he just pulled me close and covered my mouth with his free hand. He violated me like that for a few minutes while I just trembled. I’ve never felt so horrible. Just thinking about it makes me want to cry. I hate him. Hate hate hate hate hate him. I don’t want him to touch me. I don’t want him near me. I want to be left alone.
I end up just staying in my room with the door barricaded and reading. I love reading. Fiction, non-fiction, anything goes, really. I need this reading now more than ever to distract me from Lycon. I started reading this book series about these super-soldiers from way in the future who fight against aliens, but the aliens keep destroying planet after planet until
Okay, no, I don’t need to write a whole synopsis, sorry about that. I’m just really passionate about this stuff. I’ve even read books written by humans. It’s so interesting getting a look into human society. They have all sorts of technology we don’t have since we just rely on magic. I really want to go to the human world someday.
I tried to tell one of the guards about Lycon’s behavior, but you know what he did? He shrugged. I can’t believe it. How could they just not care about me? Does anyone care about me?
Even when I’m barricaded in my room, I still need to leave to eat on occasion. Once he waited around the corner in the hallway leading to my room and grabbed my arm when I turned the corner. He pinned me to the wall and I screamed for him to let me go, but he wouldn’t. He leaned in close to me and licked my face with his sloppy tongue. I flinched and my face contorted with disgust.
“You can’t escape me forever, my cute little princess.”
I scratched at his arm with my free hand, and he recoiled in pain. The scratch was deeper than I thought it would be. I saw a blaze of fury in his eyes, just before he scratched me back in the face. It was an explosion of pain. His claws had sunk deep into my skin and I was bleeding all over. I screamed, and adrenaline allowed me to push him off of me and run.
Lycon may be stronger than me, and may have longer legs, but he doesn’t have the agility of a cat. I managed to outrun him by leaping right over the furniture and I hid in the one place he’d never check: his room, which I’d never actually been to before.
Unsurprisingly, he owns a lot of porn magazines and hentai. They’re filled with all sorts of girls tied up and gagged, completely powerless. I guess that probably contributed to his warped view of the world. That, and the power of being a prince getting to his head. Apparently he’s had sex with a lot of women before, just because he’s a prince. I don’t think those women really loved him, just his position, but I don’t think he knows that. Probably too stupid to realize. I don’t want to become like one of those women who are tied up and can’t move. I want to be free.
But I found something really interesting in his room: a safe with a 4 digit combination lock. I don’t know the password, but with my cat-like agility, it should only take a few hours for me to guess every combination. Whatever he has in there must be important.
But when I get it, I’ll have the upper hand for sure. I don’t know if it’s just something really expensive or something I could blackmail him with, but I’ll have something he doesn’t. I only got through the first thousand or so combinations before I heard Lycon coming back to his room and hid under the bed. I stayed very quiet and still, and waited for him to fall asleep for a nap before I left. Thank gods he snores, or else I would have been too scared to come out for hours.
My face still stings. I think his scratch from earlier might scar, even. This has to be the worst injury I’ve ever had. I’ve never had a bone broken before because I don’t do any crazy, dangerous things. Ow… I need to get some bandages, hold on. I think I keep them in my drawer, next to my wedding ring.
My wedding ring, huh…
I don’t wear my wedding ring. I took it off the moment I got here, and put it in some random drawer. I heard it cost some ridiculous amount, and it’s a very pretty purple color, so it’s sad it went to such a horrible occasion. I’m only going to wear it if my parents force me to.
He keeps his ring on. It’s a beautiful white ring just like mine, so it’s a shame he had to get his grubby fingers all over it.
Though, about those porn magazines, I know it’s really weird, but I
No, never mind. I think I was wrong. Sorry.
He’s going to violate me.
If I don’t do anything soon, he is absolutely going to violate me. I don’t want to lose my virginity. I don’t want to be deflowered like this. I’m not ready. I’m not ready at all. I don’t even feel like an adult yet. And I especially don’t want to lose it to Lycon. I feel like I’m losing my mind. He kissed me again earlier today. He pinned me against a wall and kissed me and touched me and I couldn’t stop him. I couldn’t stop him. I couldn’t do anything. He touched my chest, my thighs, my butt, and I thought he would do more to me and I’m lucky he stopped. I could see how much he enjoyed it. He loves my body but doesn’t care about how I feel. Actually, I think he likes how I fight back against him. I want it all to stop. Stop stop stop stop stop. Please make it stop. Make it end. Please. Gods, please listen to me. Listen. Help me. Please. I don’t care what you do, just help me.
A lot has happened.
While Lycon was sleeping, I spent hours putting in every combination I could on his safe. It ended up being 4321. I don’t know what’s dumber: the fact he made that the combination, or the fact that it wasn’t one of my first guesses. Anyway, I finally found what was inside that safe.
It was a small, brown scroll for a paralysis spell, with the activation words and exact effects detailed on it. It took me half a second to realize what he wanted to use it for. He wanted to paralyze ME. Leave me completely defenseless against him. I felt the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. If I hadn’t found this, things would have ended VERY horribly for me…
I quietly shut and locked the safe and took the paralysis scroll back to my room, being very careful not to wake Lycon. At first I thought about destroying it, but then something dawned on me. I could use this as a weapon for myself. If he ever tried anything funny, all I would have to do is have the scroll on me and utter the necessary words and he would be paralyzed for half an hour. He couldn’t even blink or lift a finger for the whole duration. But I couldn’t just walk around holding the scroll, so instead I tied it to my back with rope, behind my dress, where he wouldn’t see it but I would always have it on me. Pretty ingenious, right? Maybe the gods really did listen this time.
After that, Lycon felt so much less scary to me. He acted the same as always, so I don’t think he ever even noticed the scroll was gone, but whenever he said something that made me uncomfortable, I hardly reacted knowing I could completely paralyze him in a second. I think the amount I ignored him entirely actually really pissed him off.
After just two days of this, he lost it completely. I was just reading a book while laying down on a couch when he snuck up on me and dragged me off the couch by my ankles. I hit the floor and dropped my book, and he quickly pinned both of my arms. I could feel his claws press hard against my skin.
I’ll never forget his disgusting face in that moment. He looked so proud and smug and happy, like he was about to tell me he won a triathlon gold medal. He started whispering to me about exactly what he would do to me, where he would touch me, and even the uncharacteristic ways I’d react. He said I would “beg him for more”. Makes me want to puke just remembering it.
I started purring subconsciously. It was something I had no control over. Cats purr for one of two reasons: they’re either really happy or really upset. I was the latter, but Lycon said “There we go, I knew my princess would warm up to me eventually.”
Even though I was disgusted, I did my best to stay calm. I had the scroll, and could paralyze him at any time, but I waited. I wanted to make sure he really was going to assault me before I paralyzed him, that he wasn’t making empty threats, and that he really had no soul and wouldn’t reconsider. I yelled and screamed at him to stop, but he just took his shirt off and started running his hand up my thigh and behind my skirt.
I’ll never understand how some people can be so cruel, so evil. I’ve read countless history books about the worst people in history, and I still can’t understand it. I would give up all the money and power in the world just to help even one other person. I’ve stopped trying to even comprehend it, I’ve just accepted that some people have no sort of empathy.
And Lycon is one of those people. The fact that he can pin down a girl, hear her shriek for him to stop, crying and screaming and begging him to stop, for him to not violate her, and he still enjoys it…
IT PISSES ME THE HELL OFF!
I try to be kind. I really do. But I have my GODDAMN LIMITS!
“LUX SOLIS FLAVO OVERDRIVE!”
Electricity arced up his whole body from where he was touching me, and he screamed in pain. It was the most satisfying sound I’ve ever heard. HThen, he went completely limp. If not for his faint heartbeat, you’d be convinced he was dead. He didn’t even blink. He was still conscious and could sense things, but he couldn’t move a single muscle of his entire body.
The scroll just vanished. Like most scrolls, it was single-use. I breathed a sigh of relief, before I realized something awful: the scroll is going to wear off in just thirty minutes. Once it wears off, not only would he be really pissed at me, I wouldn’t have any way to defend myself. He would just come at me again. I needed to do something. Something that would stop him from hurting me or anyone else ever again.
I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry. I hate Lycon, I hate him more than anyone in the world, and he’s everything except innocent, but I’ll never be able to forgive myself for what I did. I didn’t even think I had it in me to do that to someone.
It all happened really fast. I had the idea, and just felt like I had to do it. I got on top of him, put my claws over his eyes, and I
I pushed my claws into his eyes. Blood spurted out from them and and I just I just can’t
There’s still blood on my claws I didn’t even wash them and he could still feel pain it still hurt him and I just couldn’t take it I ran away and when one of the guards tried to stop me I just yelled that Lycon’s in trouble and it’s not wrong but it was to get them away from me and I ran away and they couldn’t follow because the grass in the cat kingdom can be almost neck high and I just ran and ran and ran into a forest and now I’m completely lost and I have nowhere to go and I’m hungry and if I come back they’ll punish me and I DON’T KNOW WHAT TO DO!
I’m sorry. I’ve been trying to hold it together during this whole entry and push what happened out of my mind but remembering this is just so painful and I kind of panicked.
The worst part of it all, the part that sickens me the most, is that I enjoyed it. I enjoyed clawing his eyes out. I felt so disgusted but deep down I loved it. And I hate myself for it. Maybe I’m no better than he is, and he’s a rapist.
Yeah… he’s a rapist. He tried to rape me.
It feels weirdly good to be able to admit that. It’s like, I can finally sort of accept that it wasn’t my fault at all and it wasn’t just some little thing. I really was almost raped.
It’s so much to process, but I can’t sleep. It’s so uncomfortable out here in the woods. I don’t know if I want them to find me or not, because I’ll certainly be punished, but I’m also so tired and hungry. There’s too much going on and I wish time would just stop.
Maybe it would be better if I just died here.
Somehow, things got worse. A lot worse.
After a whole sleepless night in that forest, a search party found me in the morning and brought me back to the mansion. I was so hungry by that point that I didn’t even care about what would happen to me. But as I was finally eating some bread in the kitchen, and I had explained the whole situation, I saw someone I didn’t recognize at first.
It was a dog guy with long white hair and a white blindfold over both of his eyes. Traditionally, whenever someone has permanent damage to their eyes, they wear a white blindfold to wear to make it obvious to others. I instinctively felt sorry for the poor guy but wondered why he was here and why he didn’t have a guard uniform on, but then it hit me like a truck.
“Lycon…?”
My tail dropped immediately. He didn’t respond. He just glared at me. Even without eyes, I could tell he was glaring. He just had that sort of expression. HEven without his eyes, his enhanced dog senses could allow him to navigate just fine and know my exact position.
He walked up to me and grabbed my wrist, his hand glowing green with some sort of magic. I pulled away quickly, and he surprisingly just let go, glaring for another second before walking away. If it wasn’t for all the guards from both the cat and dog kingdoms around, I’m sure he would have given me third degree burns with his magic. I’m not sure why it was glowing green instead of red though, but since he didn’t do anything I guess it doesn’t matter.
After that, a guard told me to follow him, which I did, and he led me to a limousine. There are very few cars in either kingdom, and they’re usually reserved for nobility. They’re all bought from the few humans who know of our existence. They have to follow the same paths as carriages, and they always attract a lot of attention, because they’re only used for important occasions.
Some cat man drove me back to the cat kingdom in silence. I was expecting to go to the castle, but instead when the car finally parked and I looked outside, I was at a large, wooden courthouse. My heart sank.
I won’t bore you with the court proceedings. There was so much legal jargon that even I didn’t understand all of it, and it took a whole day. My parents were there, but they only looked at me with severe disappointment instead of sympathy. Lycon was there too, apparently brought in a separate limo to keep us apart. He was prosecuting me, and somehow, EVERYONE bought Lycon’s lie that I just went crazy and stabbed his eyes out for no reason. He said I was jealous because I don’t have magic and he does, and that in a sudden outburst during an argument I just clawed his eyes, and that the scars on my face came from him trying to defend himself against me. Anyone with a brain could tell he was making everything up. I was expecting the judge to call him out at any moment and sentence him to life in prison, but that man just… just AGREED with him! I don’t think that judge seriously listened to a thing I said!
It was complete insanity. The entire jury voted against me. I could be the demon beast himself and they might have believed me MORE. None of it felt real at all. It was so… FRUSTRATING! I wanted to leap at Lycon and scream at him about what’s wrong with him but that would just make things worse for me. I could do nothing but stare out the window at the large teleporting facility just a few blocks away, wishing I was anywhere but here.
I really shouldn’t have teared his eyes out. I don’t know what I was thinking. I was just completely panicking. But what else could I even do? No one would listen to me, and there was no other way to stop him. Should I really have just let him rape me…?
When the judge finally declared me guilty after almost a full day of back and forth, I already knew what would happen to me. In this kingdom, our punishment for crimes like this is reciprocal to the damage done. Or, to say it in normal terms, if I cut someone’s eyes out, they’re gonna cut MY eyes out.
Just a few minutes after the verdict was passed, the courtroom’s door opened and a man with a long, black coat holding a short, sharp knife walked in. He had a black fedora that covered most of his face and he was hiding his tail so I don’t know if he was a dog or a cat. It took me only a split second to realize he was going to carry out my punishment. I tried to run but two men restrained me and held me by the arms.
I was screaming at the top of my lungs and tears streamed down my face. That man kept walking towards me and I kept thinking about how he’d be the last thing I’d ever see. I would never be able to read again, or see colors or art or anything or even write in here. I finally understood just how awful life would be with no sight. I screamed until my voice gave out and I just couldn’t scream any more and I was desperately trying to do whatever I could to escape but the men just wouldn’t let me go.
I was so scared, so much more terrified than ever before in my life, even more than I had ever been with Lycon, to the point where something inside of me just snapped all of a sudden. Just as the man was about to reach me, most of his body was suddenly obscured by green. I thought I was hallucinating in my distress until the men loosened their grip on me in surprise and I used that advantage to wrest myself free from them.
There was grass growing all around me, through the ground, and my whole body was tingling. It was impossible. It was some sort of magic, but who had done this…?
There wasn’t any time for thinking, so I just ducked and ran. The grass was up to my shoulders, the usual maximum height for grass in the cat kingdom, so I could easily duck into it and be nearly impossible to see. But it takes years for it to grow this tall normally, so who the hell was doing this?!
Then I realized why my body was tingling. This wasn’t someone else’s magic. This was MY magic. I had heard of other people discovering their magic under extreme stress, but I had assumed that like most people it would eventually just randomly awaken within me one day.
However, everyone has different magic, and the types of magic there are vary greatly. Of course there are ice magic users and earth magic users, but some people can use their magic to fly or move things with their mind and the like. Nobility, especially royalty like me, are known for having exceptionally powerful magic due to being direct descendants from the first people to gain magic. I reasoned that my power must be the power of life, but I had no way of actually controlling it yet.
I was able to escape the courthouse, and thankfully no matter where I was, grass was growing up from under me to obscure me from view. But I had no idea where to go. Everyone in the cat and dog kingdoms would be looking for me! I would be found eventually for sure. My only hope was to go somewhere beyond the cat and dog kingdoms…
Oh god, I would have to hide in the human world. I would leave behind my entire family, my entire kingdom, my whole life up to now, and somehow survive with absolutely nothing with a race of people I’ve never even met before. I had read a lot of stories about humans, sure, but I didn’t know what they were really like. And their technology is so strange and alien! Like, their guns are so terrifying, that about 200 years ago the cat and dog kingdoms actually came together to create a protective magical ward that would disintegrate any gunpowder in either kingdom. We did this so that neither kingdom would create their own guns, and also so that we couldn’t be invaded easily in case humans somehow discovered our island. We have a population of only 5 million with both kingdoms combined, which means humans outnumber us by over a THOUSAND times! Even with our magic, we could never win a battle like that!
So, I fled to the teleportation facility. Both kingdoms have one, and it’s the only reliable way to get to wherever in the world you want to go. Along the way, even though the people chasing me had completely lost track of me, my magic unfortunately just stopped working. I’m guessing the adrenaline in me somehow was keeping it going. But thankfully, I was already close to the facility by this point.
Thankfully, the whole situation with Lycon hadn’t been made public yet, and I was still a princess, so I was able to enter the facility, and order people around without question. Some staff gave me weird looks, but they knew better than to object against royalty. I had only been inside it once before when I was ten years old, so I just vaguely remembered everything. The facility is made up of the best technology we could get powered by the greatest magic we could find. Despite our general lack of technology, huge government projects like this sometimes do use human-like machinery. Most of this stuff is given to us from what the human governments allied with us can spare, but since we don’t have much to offer in return that isn’t magical and would make people realize we exist, they don’t give us their technology all too often. But this place was so advanced, they even had lightbulbs in the facility, like, REAL lightbulbs. I’m sure there’s less than a hundred lightbulbs in the whole kingdom, and at least half of them are just in this facility!
Unfortunately, I didn’t have time to stare in awe. I had something to do, and it needed to get done fast, before they figured out where I’ve gone. I was directed to a small tube in the middle of a large steel room filled with wires and small lights and I stepped inside. A glass door closed shut behind me, reminding me of how human elevators were described. There were a lot of buttons and I did not understand how to use most of them.
Some rare mages are able to teleport, but only unpredictably across short distances. We had to spend years building this complicated setup, with a mixture of human technology and magical artifacts, to be able to teleport anywhere in the world with precise accuracy. In my opinion, it’s the most impressive thing anyone in the world has ever made. If humans knew about our island, they would certainly massacre all of us just to lay their hands on a machine so valuable.
Several buttons had the names of human cities I recognized, like “New York” and “Hong Kong”. I didn’t have much time so I just randomly chose “Las Vegas”, which I was a little familiar with. Apparently humans “gamble” there, which basically means they spend a lot of money for the chance to win even more money, but a vast majority of the time they just lose and waste all their money. I really don’t understand human culture.
The process was almost instant. One moment I was standing in the tube, the next moment I felt a shock, and then I was just in some back alley between some very strange buildings. I walked out into the sunlight and then…
Well, honestly I can’t describe it here. You’d have to go to the human world yourself sometime. But there were colors everywhere, so many humans everywhere, there were a crazy number of cars, like, a completely insane amount, it smelled bad, it was so, so loud, flashing lights were everywhere, IT WAS SO OVERWHELMING! I wanted to scream and run and go home but I couldn’t!
I really expected the humans to look at me and gasp and yell and call the “police” (basically like guards who shoot bad guys with guns), since they have these instant transmission things that can talk to anyone in the world, kinda like those magical communication stones nobles use sometimes. But strangely, they either barely glanced at me or just gave me a weird look for a second. It was like I was almost a normal human being! I know some humans dress up as catgirls for some reason, but it wasn’t nearly often enough for me to be considered normal-looking. Maybe I had misjudged humans somewhat. Maybe with all their crazy technology they just don’t care much for weird things. I don’t really know.
Time passed before I knew it. I had to steal food just to not starve, but I couldn’t find anywhere to sleep. Now it’s the middle of the night, and I can’t sleep. I’m curled up on a random bench like some of the homeless people. That’s all I am now. Just another homeless person, not a beloved princess. I had to steal food. As a princess. That’s so embarrassing. I miss home. I miss home so much. I miss what my life was just a month ago. I want to go back to that. I want to see my best friend Madeline again. This all feels like some sort of horrible, horrible dream. Why does this have to happen to me? Did I do something wrong? Did I not pray to the gods enough and now they’re punishing me?
I’m so tired. So tired… at least I have my magic power now. But I can’t figure out how to activate it again. There has to be some way, right?
The power of life… that IS what my magic is, right?